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

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251–260 of 640 posts

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

#251

At this point I’m just watching a slightly younger cohort of men repeat all of my worst digital addiction mistakes like getting inserted into the online video game -> toxic online behavior pipeline (or worse, fascism), ideologies (Musk), crypto and options gambling (thanks Reddit a la 2013 for all of the crypto communities and WSB) too much computer (ouch, my neck, arms and back.) I’m not doing particularly well, esp…

I feel like the patterns are more or less the same but the cycles are getting shorter and more pronounced.

I met the son of a family friend today, he's 13, already has an opinion about the Israel/Palestine war and spent $500 in roblox so far, they're not wealthy at all. Back in my days I was stuck in the free to play parts of mmorpgs (or had to beg for months for a $5 monthly membership), playing tf2 (free) and had 0 political ideas or even knew people who cared about politics

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

#253
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's true, you do need an idea. But good ideas aren't hard to come by when you understand basic risk management. Take for example recent events. Say your idea is if this election goes one way, it's neutral/slightly bearish for TSLA, if it goes the other way it's wildly bullish for TSLA. Since one possibility isn't going to result in much movement you ignore it. For the other one you structure some options trades…

You also need an idea that's somehow different from the rest of the market. (It's the difference of opinion/point of view that makes a market.) If everyone has the exact same expectations as you, no one is going to offer you the options trade structure at a price that would be profitable for you.

Need for a different idea depends on the full size. If there are 10 shared available for $10, then nearly anyone could buy them all up and so all ideas are saturated at just one poor person. However if the idea is for a large company there are thousands of shared traded every day, and so if your idea is the company will go up in value almost nobody could buy enough shares to make a difference - even rich would struggle to find enough free money to move the value of the company by $1.

In the market there are ideas on all levels, some really are the $100 trade that will make money but that is the most possible to trade. However many ideas are on the large end where there is plenty of room for more people. If you think a fortune 100 company is under valued by $10/share you can make a ton of money (assuming you are right of course) and safely tell all your friends without affecting your ability to make money.

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

#254
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Frankly, I don’t buy the malaises argument. It obviously has some effect, but even the countries that are known for not being lonely has dropping fertility rates. And there’s almost no good argument for having more than 2 kids, which is basically a requirement for increasing population. People just have more stuff to do, and convincing a woman they should sacrifice at the bare minimum 6 years to give birth to 3 kids…

Every single woman needs to, on average, have a bit more than 2 children to have a stable population. Fewer than that and your population (once it shares the same fertility rate across generations) will begin changing at a scalar of fertility_rate/2 each ~20 years. So a fertility rate of 1 = 50% decline every 20 years. And it's exponential - that decline never stops or slows until you go extinct or start having children again.

But in this case one frustrating thing is people don't know what they don't know. My wife was quite lukewarm on having children but shortly after our first she wanted at least two more. They really change you in ways that are impossible to describe without cliche, and I think this is, by nature, even more true for the mother.

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

#255
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s peanuts! Congrats for realizing it early

Some folks' elementary or middle schools had stock picking lessons with fake money: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21642395 From mine, all I remember was getting the impression that putting money in particular stocks without knowing what you're doing is a bad idea. Pretty valuable lesson, I guess, as I've never bought individual stocks since then...

You might have learned the wrong lesson there, if your goal is to build wealth. But it’s a good idea to prevent losses

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because it's not only extremely fulfilling (well beyond what one might expect) on a personal level but also required on a social level for a culture to persist. And this is in the context of ever more people complaining of loneliness, lack of fulfillment/meaning, and more. These issues are almost certainly causally related. Help yourself, help society, and even have a voice (of sorts) in the future of humanity.

There are literal hundreds (thousands?) of philosophical schools for “meaning of life”. It’s really not a new question, and there won’t be a right answer, ever. Trying to convince someone that it is the only route to find a meaning just sounds a bit funny for anyone who watches it from the sidelines.

My question, once again, is why tech circles started focusing on this and pushing it as ideology just recently? Wasn’t a thing in 2010s, people more or less respected personal choices as long as it doesn’t harm others directly.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, how? WSB users are doing that to themselves. You can't possibly compare them to a raped person.

most rapes are not stranges in dark allies they are people who know each other. Thus a not choosing better friends can be argued to do it to yourself.

Horrible example of victim blaming here.

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

#258
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.

> 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.

I like the converse: pay certain people to NOT reproduce.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many online sentiments I think it's reactionary, specifically to the stereotype of the liberal atheist DINK milliennial couple.

In my case this is probably partly true, but more because I think many people are actively deluding themselves and trying to reject their own mortality with fantasies of digitally transferring ones conscience, bio/medical immortality a la Kurzweil, singularity stuff, and so on endlessly. But if people look at these things objectively, there is essentially 0% chance of any of this happening, let alone in our lifetimes…

I don’t think people who don’t have kids are thinking about sci-fi stuff. Other than my dad, I genuinely have never met a person who ever thinks about it, and well, he had me and my siblings.

Some people just believe in (and sometimes achieve!) fulfilment through other means. Problem is, that is objectively bad for economical and cultural growth of the humanity. No single country has been able to resolve that problem without religious beliefs or kinda forcing women to have children (by either taking all their opportunities away or them not having any by default).

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

#260
post #151

The most difficult part about the stock market is that stocks don't move for the reasons people think. People think fundamentals, news, financial performance, or chart patterns matter. But none of it does. Markets are driven purely by supply and demand. And in this case, supply and demand for the stock itself. Fundamentals are already priced in. Financial performance is already priced in. Expectations are priced in,…

> Expectations are priced in, and others probably have more information than you anyway. I have always made money on the stock market. I bought Nvidia in December 2022 and then again in April 2023. Yes the information was out there - anyone reading this board back then could see it. Or who saw Emad Mostaque's tweets that Stable Diffusion was trained on Nvidia, or who knew the semi-public information that OpenAI train…

For every story like this, there’s another story where everything moves in the opposite direction.
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