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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

#291
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?

Yes

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I recall in grade school in the 80's lots of kids had opinions on Jews, Poles, black folks, gay folks, etc. Clearly, all acquired from relatives.

Young people emulating the adults in their life is how it always has been.

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

#293

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…

It's funny because 9-5 is still a great way to actually enrich yourself. The best way to grow your wealth is to increase your income, and a salary+benefits is the juiciest way to do that. Sadly, I've seen many male friends of mine obsess with the stock market but not have anything going career-wise. They just hope they hit big and "make it." Better to just stack salary for years the boring way and save yourself the t…

9-5 is definitely not the way to enrich yourself, that's an unfortunate message. Have you noticed how housing costs have consistently beat inflation for decades? At least if you live in a VHCOL area. It's easy - check the FRED report on the median salary and compare that with a graph showing the median housing price.

OK so the most important thing is out of reach with 9-5, independence from rent. The next set of factors like health care, and if you have a kid child care and health care, are also up compared to wages (9-5 wages).

That leaves just food and entertainment. I suppose you could live with roommates, eat frugally and not go out. And then maybe the 9-5 is the way to become rich.

For most of us the way to build wealth is through asset appreciation - housing , stocks. The 9-5 is the 'not so passive income' that you use day-to-day while you either SAVE up for the 'assets' (if you're lucky), or you gamble / inherit / get lucky with these assets.

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

#294
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,…

It's not really elitist. Picking individual stocks is essentially saying "I have brand new insight that nobody else has, and I'm going to earn profit by incorporating that knowledge into prices and be rewarded forgetting it right". This is clearly a very specialized activity, you shouldn't expect to be able to bring brand new, accurate insight, and out predict everyone else in the world, without a deep understanding of economics, finance, and expertise in the specific industry and the company you're trading in. It's no more elitist to say "most people should just buy index funds" than it is to say "most people should just get root canals done by dentists rather than doing it themselves".

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

#295

> 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.

Yea, except the inflation we encountered in the last 3 years were directly from trying to keep asset values from dropping. They are at their ropes end. There really isn't that much room between mass inflation vs. the rich keeping their numbers infinity growing.

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

#296

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…

If you don't have decades of built up propaganda it's pretty easy to see that Israel is the bad guy. The condescending "it's complicated" line is part of the propaganda telling you that you're not allowed to come to the obvious conclusion for yourself. My 10 year has figured out that Russia is the bad guy in Ukraine and that Israel is the bad guy in Gaza.

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

#297

> 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 problem is that I have been seeing some version of the “crash imminent, sell everything” thesis for my entire life. Almost nobody who “saw the crash coming” in the case of the dotcom bubble, or covid, or the subprime crisis made any money, because almost nobody gets the timing or magnitude of the crash right. You can find YouTube channels that have been warning people that a crash is imminent for the last two years. If you had been out of the market for the last two years you would have missed historical gains, and for what? The magnitude of the crash you’re protecting yourself from would now have to be impractically huge for you to come out ahead.

Much better to just stay in the market, knowing that there will be crashes and you will have days where the numbers look awful, because they’ll look great again in a few years.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#299
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

I recall in grade school in the 80's lots of kids had opinions on Jews, Poles, black folks, gay folks, etc. Clearly, all acquired from relatives. Young people emulating the adults in their life is how it always has been.

[deleted]

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

#300

If you have the math chops, you should really try to get into it just so you can realize you are not going to make a money making algorithm. I got knee deep into it out of boredom during Covid and was able to have the "aha" moment where you realize the best you can do is buy index funds or just long hold companies you believe in that are in your area of expertise.

I tried for a long time with stocks, then I tried stock options. I eventually moved off to index and treasury futures. No money to be made in stocks, shitty leverage, high fees, LOUSY TAX TREATMENT and to complicate matters further shorting can be problematic. Also no "real" market is open 24h so you really just get to trade open-to-close standard hours. Stocks just have too many things going against you to make any…

> No money to be made in stocks, shitty leverage, high fees, LOUSY TAX TREATMENT and to complicate matters further shorting can be problematic.

Historic evidence does not support this statement in the strong sense. Whether it is true, in a weak sense, into the future, is debatable.

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