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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

#591

Post by qazxcvbnmlp »

whateveracct wrote: post #407
mancerayder wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fact…

idk man I graduated a decade ago and switched jobs every 2ish years and now my income dwarfs my expenses and I saved $100k+ for a down payment years ago. It's those raises from changing jobs, promotions, career development that paid off more than which ETF I stuffed my money into. I don't live frugally or have roommates (except my wife who hasn't worked for years). I've literally never had expenses so high I couldn't…

It’s still possible to do this, but requires prudence (which isn’t an appealing message).

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

#592

Post by tptacek »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #565
SkipperCat wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there was a lot of factors, going back years before WWII, but I still believe that the aftermath of the Holocaust was major contributing factor to the creation of the State of Israel. https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/academic/holocaust-factor... The Holocaust created hundreds of thousands of European Jewish refugees and international sympathy which had an effect on the UN vote for statehood.

I don't take issue with the creation of Israel as a means to put all the displaced Jews somewhere. I take issue with that the land provided for this project was taken without the consent of any of the nations from which it was taken, which is colonialism and why it's impossible to separate Israel from the colonialist roots that helped create it. Just as it's impossible to not see it as an act of Western dominance tow…

The same thing happened to Jewish people in those "pissed off" surrounding countries, to the extent that a plurality of the Jewish population of Israel is of MENA origin (the "Mizrahim"). There is no simple history of the area, and nothing that will fit into an HN comment.

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

#593

Post by zahlman »

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.

I think the bigger problem is having a rational basis for choosing a company and believing in its revenue prospects. It's probably gotten harder now that companies much more commonly reinvest their profits in the company or into stock buybacks, rather than paying a dividend, for tax reasons. (Modulo the tax effects, paying a dividend vs letting the stock appreciate should be a wash, but it's harder to evaluate the current fair value of a stock when your evaluation is based on the expectation of that fair value changing over time.)

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

#594

Post by zahlman »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #522
MichaelDickens wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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.

Nitpick: a tenet is a foundational principle or belief; a tenant is someone who pays rent. (Which I suppose could be used as a metaphor for a dividend-paying stock, but.)

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

#595

Post by throwaway2037 »

Tade0 wrote: post #527
netsharc wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Most US-educated people take a class called "social studies" in middle school (grades 6-8). That will introduce them to the news cycle and geopolitics. Also, if there is an exciting political election in your early teens, many people become interested in politics at that age.

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

#596

Post by throwaway2037 »

hollerith wrote: post #458
xxpor wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one had an opinion about Vietnam? I was 13 in 2003, plenty of people had an opinion about 9/11, civil liberties, and Iraq.

I don't recall any opinions about Vietnam and would probably have remembered if someone had expressed an opinion to me. And the war or whatever we call the situation in Gaza would be something I'd want to shield my 13-year-old child from having any knowledge of if I were a parent -- for basically the same reason I'd want to shield them from learning about sadomasochistic sex as long as possible.

    > I don't recall any opinions about Vietnam
It was constantly on the nightly news. The Vietnam War was one of the first widely filmed conflicts. Plus, there were regular violent protests against the draft. I find it hard to believe that the adults around you didn't have strong opinions about it. Did that not interest you or affect you?

I am bit younger, but I was exposed to the outfall of Vietnam through Hollywood films and documentaries.

    > the situation in Gaza
Your (hypothetical) 13-year old child is probably learning about it in their social studies class. Also: What age do you think German children begin to learn about the National Socialist/WW-2 era? I guess around 12-13 years old, and they turn out pretty well-adjusted to the world (in my humble opinion).

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

#597

Post by wombat-man »

bell-cot wrote: post #471
navs wrote: post #343

I lost my life savings chasing the dopamine hit and can relate to this. I'm in my mid 30s and suffering from career burnout. I know I can't afford a home when I can barely work full-time so I figured I'd trade. I was up, and up and up! Then I was down, then up, then down. One morning I woke up and I was so down, I sold out of fear. Now I'm left with so little I might as well be starting from scratch. This feels like…

My experience, with a wide variety of generally older friends & associates & such - If they're talking about an occasional visit to the casino, people will be up front about the fact that they walked into the place with $X in their pocket, and walked out with $Y. Almost always, $X > $Y. If they're talking about stocks they've bought, people will be incredibly selective, and describe only some of their greatest succes…

Heh, I'm kind of the opposite. I like talking about the time I gambled with a couple thousand on options and after a rollercoaster experience, lost it.

But my index funds are not an interesting topic, imo.

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

#598

Post by margalabargala »

carlosjobim wrote: post #531
cherryteastain wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Spot equities and crypto have limited downside. You put in x, most you can lose is x as you observed. Unlimited downside is not a thing outside certain exotic derivatives.

Even if zero is the bottom, an asset can have unlimited downside. It can go from $0.1 per share to $0.0001 per share and so on without end. Or, with the rational perspective, after 0 the downside does not matter anymore. An asset cannot go below zero, at least the assets I know of. An investment can go below zero and beyond, when you use leverage. But that's a derivative and not an asset, as you've pointed out. What…

An asset has unlimited downside, in the same sense that you can't move anywhere. See, to move somewhere, you would first have to get halfway there, and to get halfway there, you first half to get a quarter of the way there, and so on, so therefore you can never move from where you are.

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

#599

Post by whateveracct »

qazxcvbnmlp wrote: post #591
whateveracct wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk man I graduated a decade ago and switched jobs every 2ish years and now my income dwarfs my expenses and I saved $100k+ for a down payment years ago. It's those raises from changing jobs, promotions, career development that paid off more than which ETF I stuffed my money into. I don't live frugally or have roommates (except my wife who hasn't worked for years). I've literally never had expenses so high I couldn't…

It’s still possible to do this, but requires prudence (which isn’t an appealing message).

i guess it always required prudence. good attribute to have.

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

#600

Post by throwaway2037 »

ANewFormation wrote: post #329
tokioyoyo wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that makes sense. Someone else commented how “maybe HN demographics just happened to be people who just had kids, thus the echo-chamber”. Which, would explain a lot. Re: Musk — no real opinions about him wrt other ventures, but surely no sane person can look at him as a decent father figure, no? It just sounds like a “populate Earth for populating reasons!” completely disregarding the well being of the kids p…

I think it's more about concern for society and Western civilization in particular. Low fertility will cause nations, and cultures, to contract and eventually collapse. 'Eventually' not being some excessively distant reference - South Korea may well become a failed state within our lifetimes if nothing radically changes, seouly due to fertility. And most other nations will be right behind them. As for anybody's paren…

It is interesting that people have such strong views about South Korea or Japan's declining birth rate, but have very little to say about rich countries in Europe. Why is this? I never once heard anyone saw that Italy will become a failed states in X years in the future due to population decline. Recently, I saw a chart from Financial Times (here: https://www.ft.com/content/1b139d1a-07ea-4612-9c2b-62c430119...) that showed birth rates in Italy, Germany, Finland, and Spain are ultra low (less than 1.5). More likely: These countries will import more and more temporary, and possibly, permanent labour, to help in their industries. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are already doing it extensively, but it doesn't get very much press coverage.
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