More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by wqaatwt » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 8:25 AM UTC

regresscheck wrote: post #321

SoftTalker wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the reason dollar-cost-averaging works. You buy less (shares) when the market is high, and more when it is low, without thinking about it and without trying to "time" your transactions (which almost always fails unless you have inside info).

It works in a sense of not timing the market. Lump sum beats dollar-cost averaging - because you have more time in market.

On average across all investors. Not so much if you invested at the peak of dot.com (would have taken decades to break even) or even the covid bubble.

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

#522

Post by RandomThoughts3 » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 8:43 AM UTC

MichaelDickens wrote: post #430

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…

> “Value investing” is dead for most, picking a company that you believe will generate solid long-term revenue is no longer interesting. In that sense, value investing has always been dead—most people were never interested in that. That's why value investing worked.

Technically, value investing still work.

The key tenant of value investing is that there exist companies which based on their financial metrics are fundamentally under valued by the market (in opposition to what market price efficiency predicts).

From there, an insane market should provide you with even more opportunities to value invest.

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

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Post by xanderlewis » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 8:44 AM UTC

stocknoob wrote: post #515

carlosjobim wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dollar cost averaging does not work and has never worked. Because most assets have unlimited upside and unlimited downside. A stock or asset can go ballistic for decades like Apple or Bitcoin, or it can fall to zero value. There are no mathematical ways of winning investing. If it was that easy, everybody would do it. You can only follow your heart and do your due diligence.

X to 0 is an interesting definition of unlimited.

Unlimited in ratio, I guess.

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

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Post by MrVandemar » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 8:47 AM UTC

Dilettante_ wrote: post #354

MrVandemar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, we haven't all been there. Some of us took to heart the lesson from War Games (1983), and apply it liberally: "An interesting game Dr Falkon: The only way to win is not to play."

I don't know if the stock market is really the same as Global Thermonuclear Warfare

The principle can be broadly applied. The stock market and our society as a whole, the money never trickles down, it floods upwards, and the few people at the top will never be me, and it will never be you. Don't play the game.

Reminds me of an Andy Capp comic:

Andy: I need to borrow a fiver to put on "Flighty Horse" at 5pm. It's a certainty! I can't lose!

Flo: Where did we go on holiday?

Andy: Yer mum's.

Flo: Where did your bookmaker go on holiday?

Andy: Jamaica.

Flo: Think about it.

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

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Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 8:51 AM UTC

joshlemer wrote: post #371

mancerayder wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without a deep understanding of economics, finance, and expertise in the specific industry and the company you're trading in. is in contradiction to >It's not really elitist. It's not wrong . But elitist is absolutely is. We're saying, only these people can do these things correctly. Is it true? It's subject to debate. You can be in IT, discover a software product at work and decide you think the company is worth i…

Well, buying stock in a company because you like their product is precisely the kind of bad stock picking strategy I'm talking about. The quality of a company's product is public information, so you should expect it to be priced in. Whether or not to pick any individual stock should be made on the basis of whether that stock is over-valued or under-valued in the market, not if it's a good company overall. Amazing com…

[deleted]

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

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Post by exe34 » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 9:23 AM UTC

n144q wrote: post #506

exe34 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds like he had a hobby.

An expensive one. I'd spend that money on piano/drawing lessons or something. Or take a few trips around the world. Better return on investment.

could have been worse - video games, prostitutes, etc.

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

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Post by Tade0 » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 9:47 AM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #467

hollerith wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was 13 (in the US in the 1970s) none of my classmates or friends ever expressed any interest in geopolitics or international relations.

That's probably the benefit of you not being 24/7 glued to the broadcast system called social media. I imagine in the 70s you spent your time mostly with friends in real life, and geopolitics was just 10 easily missable minutes on TV every evening. Sure maybe there's a minority of kids with social media/smartphone bans nowadays, but they're probably as plentiful as 13 year olds interested in geopolitics in the 1970s.…

You don't need social media to be aware of what's going on in the world.

At 13 (early 2000ish) I was reading the newspapers my parents brought home and debated a friend of mine who in turn read his parents' newspapers - mutually exclusive sets from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

I need ask: when is the best moment to, as a parent, introduce a young person to the news cycle? You'll inevitably have to since they're on their way to become voters and taxpayers.

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

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Post by izacus » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 10:29 AM UTC

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…

By far most likely is that the loudest cohort of HN users (or people in your social circle) has aged to the point where they want families. Younger people are on other social networks.

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

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Post by bell-cot » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 10:50 AM UTC

navs wrote: post #520

barfingclouds wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep this is the craziest part. The answer has been known for a long time. S&P500. Literally that simple

100% I did that at first and got greedy and impatient. Serves me right.

From both the folks I know, and years of comments here on HN - you have LOTS of company.

In the fictional world of Economics, humans are all homo rationalens, and never make such mistakes.*

Vs. in the real world...

*Yes, I sometimes wonder if there's a brutally predatory subtext here - with Economics quietly endorsing "do unto them as you will" maltreatment of anyone who the 0.01% can maneuver into behaving "irrationally".

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

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Post by mnky9800n » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 11:26 AM UTC

mordymoop wrote: post #297

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 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 yea…

I just always buy and never sell until the leadership and the board of the company appear to be going full retard. And not in a good way like Netflix pivoting to streaming in 2006 but like HP in 2006. Haha.