The supposed "survey" or whatever the hell this is was taken from a bunch of amateur people who started trading out of boredom which depicts an entirely non-real picture of the people who have been doing this for a living since quite some time. Like with everything else, using your brain cells can quickly make you realize it's a lot more than "gambling"
> Like with everything else, using your brain cells can quickly make you realize it's a lot more than "gambling"
Which sounds similar to how gambling addicts report their thoughts on their addiction - that they are smart enough to learn poker, or they know enough basketball to be able to predict outcomes.
Like with everything else, some research and data interpretation shows that with the remarkable exception of two or three highly specialized companies that employ some of the best mathematicians alive, most active investors underperform.
This comment should not be greyed out. See the Buffett Bet [1] for the most famous example of this.
Warren Buffet bet a million against Ted Seides (head of Protege at the time) that a simple index fund investment would outperform any handpicked selection of hedge funds over a decade. And critically this bet was made in 2008 just before the market crashed! That's when hedge funds should disproportionately shine, as per their name, by hedging. In the end it wasn't even close.
I think it would be much better if the comments here focused on the benefits of passive, long term investments in index funds. As it is, I worry people will “correct” by leaving money in a savings account instead.
>Which sounds similar to how gambling addicts report their thoughts on their addiction - that they are smart enough to learn poker, or they know enough basketball to be able to predict outcomes.
Some people are smart enough to learn poker, and build careers out of them. And there are many books on poker. You picked a poor example.
You're right in that sense that people think they can learn to be the best, and fail at it, as only few succeed. The game wouldn't have tournaments if that were true no one could consistently win financially.
You're also right that it triggers the addiction itch in some vulnerable individuals!
I play poker and would never be stupid enough to put real money on it. It's great as a social game for me where 25 dollars is the risk.
> I play poker and would never be stupid enough to put real money on it
This whole thread is casinos arguing against regulation because casual poker players don’t get addicted. We have billions of dollars targeting young people (mostly single young men) with gambling, from zero-day options trading to crypto and sports betting.
> a bunch of amateur people who started trading out of boredom
Former options market maker. The industry was dead for a decade until the pandemic. It’s now more profitable than ever. Lots of negative-alpha orders that can be predictably sorted from the flow. Market makers are seeing casino-like margins on some subsets of flow; that signals a problem.
It's hilarious watching the r/Superstonks subreddit live in a pretend reality. Supposedly Citadel is their sworn enemy but they've spent the past 4 years purposely buying badly priced shares from them.
How do you educate someone so confidently and consistently wrong in their world? Someone who INSISTS that "No, this letter from BBBY that says that we are going to see massive share dilution when 500k new shares are printed and sold to pay down debts before the company is shut down, is a lie because they actually are going to magically transform into a new competitor against Amazon because Ryan Cohen (a man who was only part of BBBY for like a month) is going to be the new CEO and make us all rich"
When those shares dropped at an obviously stupid price with zero future value, they bought them by the hundreds and LITERALLY wrote "thank you for the tasty dip"
There are plenty of people who are trading with a strategy. There are also oodles of people who are engaging with trading in precisely the same way that somebody engages with sports betting. And various platforms are using similar marketing and ux strategies as betting platforms to encourage this.
