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

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

#261

Post by sokoloff »

bluGill wrote: post #253
sokoloff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 strugg…

> 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)

Inherent in this $10/share profit opportunity is that not everyone agrees with you. (If everyone did agree with you, the discrepancy/opportunity would collapse from $10 to under a penny.)

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

#262

Post by alumic »

intended wrote: post #229
jondwillis wrote: post #205

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…

Wsb was 2013??

I remember the “community” having its own well-defined memes and culture by at least 2016

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

#263

Post by hollerith »

jaco6 wrote: post #37
jshpool wrote: 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.

>most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.

Untrue: e.g., in the US, "Among women and men aged 40–49 in 2015–2019, 84.3% of women had given birth and 76.5% of men had fathered a child."

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf

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

#264

Post by mancerayder »

habosa wrote: post #247

Many criticize the retail investor for treating the stock market like gambling, but I think it really does resemble gambling more than investing these days. How many times have we seen a companies value jump or fall by billions based on a tweet? How many meme stocks have we seen? How many pump and dump SPACs have there been? How many companies have never (and likely will never) made a dime in profit but see their mar…

I agree.

I think the reality is the "don't try to be smart, do these low-risk things because statistically you're too stupid to beat the market" has logic to it, and stats to back it up. But the unspoken part is, "let the rich do that stuff, and their wealth advisors and folks on the golf courses".

So there's an elitist aspect to telling people to back off. We all know people who made a killing on individual stocks, either because they bought them or they worked at a company that issued them.

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

#265

Post by tokioyoyo »

ANewFormation wrote: post #254
tokioyoyo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 child…

I agree with you, and you’re probably right! My parents said the same thing. Both my siblings have children as well.

But if the argument starts with “you’ll understand when you have kids!” to convince people to have kids… well, it’s like blindly trusting people. And again, it is coming from a person who will have children when the time comes. And relatively speaking, I’m doing ok financially, and it’s one of the problems I can take care of for the future of my children.

For every good parental story, there are quite a few unfortunate ones as well. The problem with the information access is, people tend to realize that chances of it happening is not 0. So you have all the opportunity loss, combined with the potential regrets and problems that add up for every new child… the math doesn’t add up for having multiple children. Also, doesn’t help that the average age of having the first child is already at 30s.

Anyways, I think I’m just generally angry that pseudo-intellectuals (including ourselves) are scared to propose other solutions. Because they will always be very unethical (lab babies, taking rights away and etc.) or very uneconomical.

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

#266

Post by CoryAlexMartin »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #154
jaco6 wrote: 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 think it's a pushback against the emphasis on individualism in our culture, which many find does not lead to real fulfillment. When you start a family, you're giving up your own glory, but in doing so you become deeply integrated into something greater than yourself, which makes you greater by extension.

And I say this as someone who doesn't have kids either, and as someone who used to not be so excited by the prospect, but I've witnessed how it's transformed my friends and family members.

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

#267

Post by JKCalhoun »

Pooge wrote: post #228
JKCalhoun wrote: post #210

> They expect the problem to worsen. The stock market has climbed 23% this year... The problem will resolve itself if (when?) the market crashes. I remember the run up to the dot-com bust. I was too much of a bumpkin at the time to even know how I would trade stocks — but I listened to an acquaintance go on and on about how much he was making on the market. At the time I guessed that he was much smarter than me — tha…

I have to disagree with you. Comparing long-term, passive investors to short-term speculators seems unfair and simplistic to me.

I thought we were talking exclusively about short-term speculators.

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

#268

Post by tokioyoyo »

CoryAlexMartin wrote: post #266
tokioyoyo wrote: post #154

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…

I think it's a pushback against the emphasis on individualism in our culture, which many find does not lead to real fulfillment. When you start a family, you're giving up your own glory, but in doing so you become deeply integrated into something greater than yourself, which makes you greater by extension. And I say this as someone who doesn't have kids either, and as someone who used to not be so excited by the pros…

But why now, and not like 5 years ago? That’s the weirdness I don’t understand. Is it just very loud people had a bunch of kids and trying to push the same on others? Trying to change the culture from the start? “Meaning of life” is like the oldest question that has ever existed. Both people with and without children have pondered about it for eternity. It just looks funny when you see a sudden shift in the discourse.

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

#269

Post by Pooge »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #267
Pooge wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree with you. Comparing long-term, passive investors to short-term speculators seems unfair and simplistic to me.

I thought we were talking exclusively about short-term speculators.

Oh? Perhaps I misunderstood when you said "infrequent trading".

I'm also wondering why I'm getting downvoted but this is the Internet for me :)

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

#270

Post by fullshark »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #210

> They expect the problem to worsen. The stock market has climbed 23% this year... The problem will resolve itself if (when?) the market crashes. I remember the run up to the dot-com bust. I was too much of a bumpkin at the time to even know how I would trade stocks — but I listened to an acquaintance go on and on about how much he was making on the market. At the time I guessed that he was much smarter than me — tha…

The Gov't / Federal Reserve has made it clear they will not let the value of assets drop significantly ever again. The entire planet's capital is now betting on US equities going up and to right forever, and all levers will be used and invented wholesale from nothing to keep that going.
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