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More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

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181–190 of 640 posts

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#181
post #37
post #5

Lot of people are becoming more knowledgable and skillful. But purpose is the missing ingredient. Without purpose or a motivator in life people end up getting trapped in mindless rituals. It keeps the reward circuitry in the brain from decaying.

Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.

This is the best answer. From a strictly rational perspective, parenthood makes little sense. The negatives are obvious and intimidating, while the benefits (which are not rational but instinctual) are less clear. Happily, oxytocin is a helluva drug. It will rearrange your universe in the course of an hour, such that all of its substance revolves around a splotchy, squinty little ape.

I highly recommend it.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#182
The supposed "survey" or whatever the hell this is was taken from a bunch of amateur people who started trading out of boredom which depicts an entirely non-real picture of the people who have been doing this for a living since quite some time. Like with everything else, using your brain cells can quickly make you realize it's a lot more than "gambling"

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#184
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.

A bit off-topic, but it’s interesting how this became the de-facto answer to any question related to “meaning of life” in the last 2-3 years in HN/tech circles. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it’s a bit weird. Like I’m sure everyone knows that? If a person isn’t having a child in their 30s, they either can’t because of multitude of different reasons, or they decided they don’t want to. Disclaimer: I’m as pro-kid as…

I agree it’s becoming a common sentiment among the online pseudo-intelligentsia, but it’s still rare on a population level, so I will keep spreading the sentiment. I think it’s important, mainly on an economic level (I believe economic growth is impossible without population growth), but I speculate the decline of family-having is at the root of some of our other social-psychological malaises: loneliness, substance abuse, mental illness, increasing interest in extreme politics. Tech people should be most interested in family as an answer to social woes because currently people are blaming either social media and tech for social dysfunction,or the collapse in family-having, or both. If family is the answer then lots of tech will be exonerated.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#185

The supposed "survey" or whatever the hell this is was taken from a bunch of amateur people who started trading out of boredom which depicts an entirely non-real picture of the people who have been doing this for a living since quite some time. Like with everything else, using your brain cells can quickly make you realize it's a lot more than "gambling"

> a bunch of amateur people who started trading out of boredom

Former options market maker. The industry was dead for a decade until the pandemic. It’s now more profitable than ever. Lots of negative-alpha orders that can be predictably sorted from the flow. Market makers are seeing casino-like margins on some subsets of flow; that signals a problem.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#186
post #37
post #5

Lot of people are becoming more knowledgable and skillful. But purpose is the missing ingredient. Without purpose or a motivator in life people end up getting trapped in mindless rituals. It keeps the reward circuitry in the brain from decaying.

Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.

> jaco6 : Maybe the minority who want to reproduce will be paid to reproduce for everyone else in the future?

This latter comment of yours was down voted by idiots to the point where it's dead, so I could not respond to it directly.

Anyway, specifics aside, it is actually a good idea - for a variety of reasons.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#187

At one point I knew I could beat the market with l33t software skills. I was wrong and only realized it after donating about 3k to Wall Street.

> only realized it after donating about 3k to Wall Street. An education in finance is expensive, not matter where you get it from.

3k is much, much cheaper than many college degrees, even from state schools with in-state tuition.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#188
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every so often I receive commercially sensitive information about my company which I'm not allowed to disclose before it's formally communicated to the stock market. For fun, I try to predict what impact it'll have on the share price (though of course I can't actually trade!) I can successfully predict the direction of the share price movement 50% of the time and successfully predict the magnitude of the share price…

>I can successfully predict the direction of the share price movement 50% of the time 50% performance when there are two options is chance, no? So that just means that you can't predict it at all.

Technically there is a third possibility that the price will remain exactly the same. But the odds of that are even lower.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too don’t understand why technical analysis isn’t classified as a genre of fiction…

I think some make money trading just that or am I wrong? I’m not talking about youtubers

Some people win the lottery.

You should still be skeptical if they try and sell you on their patented lottery number picking strategy.

Re: More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

#190

The regular 9-to-5 is seen as a last resort now—it’s almost like you’ve failed if you don’t have a side hustle. That’s the vibe. With AI and machine learning platforms making waves, especially for traders, the game has completely changed. The barrier to entry? Practically gone. These platforms have made it so easy to get started that anyone with a bit of curiosity can jump in. It’s not the exclusive playground of the…

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