Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 640 posts

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

#281

Post by llamaimperative »

in-pursuit wrote: post #249
llamaimperative wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all ultimately boils down to "the attacks that I believe I'm immune to are okay , the attacks that I'm not immune to are not okay. " The victim in your knife attack had the opportunity to leave by never going to the grocery store. The fact they couldn't foresee that attack is solely because they lacked the information or cognitive ability to foresee it, just like an 80 IQ gambler with a Draftkings account lacks…

No, your argument is basically “all bad things are equivalent to knife attacks.” Look, I’m not saying deception and scamming are “ok”, I’m just saying comparing them to knife attacks is stupid.

When it comes to suitability of blaming the victim for said crime, they are equivalent.

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

#282

Post by bluGill »

sokoloff wrote: post #261
bluGill wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

There is the risk. Those who don't agree might be right. However we can see at larger changes in price over a year all the time so sometimes the others are wrong.

telling which is an evercise I can't help you with. I invest in index funds.

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

#283

Post by xattt »

hashishen wrote: post #214
siltcakes wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they also drinking tons of soda? I can’t believe how much I used to drink. I don’t touch any drink with sugar (other than lactose/latte) nowadays. It’s so disgusting, don’t know how I ever did it in the first place.

God my teeth wish i had just stopped drinking soda a decade ago. It wasnt even that hard to kick

How much of that was soda, and how much was it access to preventative care?

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

#284

Post by onemoresoop »

lm28469 wrote: post #251
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…

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…

$500 in Roblox? that's a lot of money for a 13 year old and that money could likely be spent elsewhere... As far as the opinion about Israel/Palestine it's likely that opinion is inherited from family or cohort and it's not fully their own.

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

#285

Post by onemoresoop »

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…

Aren't index funds more modest in gains but more safe?

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

#286

Post by CoryAlexMartin »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #268
CoryAlexMartin wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've seen the sentiment building over the last several years. Though I think part of why it's such a prevalent sentiment now as opposed to a few years ago, is very obvious signs of cultural breakdown started to show strongly in maybe 2017 or so, and people started questioning the prominent messages in our culture and seeking answers, and for many, finding those answers takes time.

There are probably other related factors too, like increased awareness of population decline, but I think both reasons are intertwined.

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

#287

Post by epicureanideal »

fullshark wrote: post #270
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.

At some point though something will happen such that they can’t keep their fist on the scale, and then the market can correct suddenly.

Unfortunately government intervention makes it even more unpredictable when that will be.

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

#288

Post by mancerayder »

dismalaf wrote: post #175
matt3210 wrote: post #38

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.

In the beginning, I donated about $10k to Wall Street. Got smarter, went to university for first finance, then economics. Learned to actually trade. Crushed the market, made nearly $100k annually with starting capital of only $30k. Then realized my life expenses were a significant part of that, I didn't have enough capital to grow it fast enough to both live life and accumulate capital to make trading more worthwhile…

It's good story but entrepreneurialism is a lot more than just a chosen career path, like teacher, software developer, product manager. It requires ideas, networking or connections, and usually capital.

And then that leaves working the 9-5 (or if you're in IT it's more like 8 to 6), and maybe getting 10-20% of your salary in bonus at the end of the year.

Rinse-repeat.

Trading is at least exciting.

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

#289

Post by bilater »

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…

This is easy to say but the reality is being a monkey and throwing money in the market over the last 15 years would have made you f u money. Yet most people never did it. So who is the genius: the guy who remains on the sidelines and eventually is proved right or the guy who remained in the market and did face a brutal correction. One thing I've learned about myself is that I'll never be the guy on the right end of that mid curve meme so I might as well lean in on being on the left.

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

#290

Post by tokioyoyo »

CoryAlexMartin wrote: post #286
tokioyoyo wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've seen the sentiment building over the last several years. Though I think part of why it's such a prevalent sentiment now as opposed to a few years ago, is very obvious signs of cultural breakdown started to show strongly in maybe 2017 or so, and people started questioning the prominent messages in our culture and seeking answers, and for many, finding those answers takes time. There are probably other related fac…

2017 is actually a great reference point wrt cultural changes! I think that is the year when bubble and echo-chamber creations accelerated to the T, so people who ponder about the same things just talk to each other. And they never really get to talk to the outsider groups or hear their opinions as often. 2020s was probably the only couple of years when everyone got to talk about the same topic, but that was for unfortunate reasons. I think “have lots of kids!” idea pushers are just screaming into the void right now, because they offer no solutions to people in other chambers.
Post reply on HN