how to not waste your life

[sushi]

and live productive. days passes, time flies, years disappear, I get older. This is a guide to how to not waste your days. Please add your input and suggestions

(1) write a plan for tommorow before sleep, or have some general plan for the week.

(2) have a list of things you wish to do before you are dead

(3)take risks

(4) procrastination, meh, I can't really solve this one.

(5) time managment, don't overwork,

make a list of things you need to do. do the minimum if you are working for someone else or a wage slave.

I used to not plan, but I somehow plan now because of laziness, not because I like to work as hard as possible, and i don't want to spend all my time working aimlessly for nothing.

 

[Black Rose]

meaningful work
good social relationships
learning and helping others
eventful life experiences

 

[Cognisant]

 

[TheManBeyond]

at the moment i'm going through one of the most boring times of my life.
what i'm doing to entertain myself in the absence of my friends and social life is:

- hobbies: record music - thinking of new projects (change of style, different of what i'm confortable with, something easier, less challenging yet new to let fresh air in, something cool can come out), play videogames once a while, keep doing audiovisual stuff, that's playing around with cameras and then with Photoshop, after effects and such. By this i improve my skills and also produce stuff for the world. It is up to them to take a look or not.
- looking for a better job: sending cvs to all kind of offers, organizations, volunteering, normal job offers
- planning a trip to a reggae festival in poland for August.
- trying to not spend money from my savings.

I think by doing all of these eventually something interesting will come my way. Something like leaving my current place and cool adventures and new people to meet. For now, i have to deal with it the best i can.
The problema is that i did so much in the last 2 years that now everything seems to be so little.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Unless you suppose the difference between Elon Musk and some random bum living in the gutter is that the former has a better to-do list, then writing plans is a complete waste of time. Better learn how to become emotionally invested in your projects – chemical motivation is the only real motivation.

 

[Cogitant]

[bimgx=450]http://positivehead.com/ponder-this/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/blog-featured-img-wed-3-9-2016-1024x536.png[/bimgx]

Spoiler

[bimgx=450]http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/3778dd0b-78b7-43e6-a898-52015a9b9d97/61af2d3c-d553-4588-8803-1603c4636ad7_560_420.jpg[/bimgx]

 

[Intolerable]

1. Don't get married.
2. Learn to say no to people who ask way too much from you.
3. Invest heavily in a nutrient-rich diet at least 3 times a week. It will make your elderly life much more pleasant.
4. Maintain at least two professional doors. Just in case the one you're currently doing dries up. It may reawaken for you later in life but the priority should always be on sustainable income.
5. Know what you need and what you don't need. This one is immensely important!

There are probably more but I'm getting tired.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

1. Don't get married.
2. Learn to say no to people who ask way too much from you.
3. Invest heavily in a nutrient-rich diet at least 3 times a week. It will make your elderly life much more pleasant.
4. Maintain at least two professional doors. Just in case the one you're currently doing dries up. It may reawaken for you later in life but the priority should always be on sustainable income.
5. Know what you need and what you don't need. This one is immensely important!

There are probably more but I'm getting tired.

This is actually very good

 

[Grayman]

Keep moving foward. Never look back. Don't think too much into it.

 

[Happy]

No social media

Rarely check news

Rarely check email. (And don't reply, call them instead)

Turn your phone off every once in a while

Go outside

Talk to people face to face

Here's a little gem:
"No hurry; No pause"

 

[davidintp]

1. Don't get married.

1. 
   
   Wrooong. Get married

 

[washti]

1. start private/family budget
2. save 80% of your income
3. learn investing damn hard
4. start investing you savings
5. reinvest returns
6. accumulate over 30 times of your annual expenses (to have SWR 4% or better less than 2% @.@)
7. live on interests from your growing portfolio (http://earlyretirementextreme.com/)
8. Do WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT
9. Dont die.

 

[pjoa09]

1. start private/family budget
2. save 80% of your income
3. learn investing damn hard
4. start investing you savings
5. reinvest returns
6. accumulate over 30 times of your annual expenses (to have SWR 4% or better less than 2% @.@)
7. live on interests from your growing portfolio (http://earlyretirementextreme.com/)
8. Do WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT
9. Dont die.

line 8 contradicts with the rest.

 

[washti]

ok. 8 needs small modification
As long as yours annual spending are lower than 2%-4% of your capital, you can do WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT

 

[Nebulous]

AaahHAH HAH hahahahaha heHEEHHAAHAAHCH

 

[Reluctantly]

ok. 8 needs small modification
As long as yours annual spending are lower than 2%-4% of your capital, you can do WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT

Agreed.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

ok. 8 needs small modification
As long as yours annual spending are lower than 2%-4% of your capital, you can do WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT

Where do you get that 2-4% return though? There is obviously no way you get that from interest atm. Short term government bonds have negative yield in Europe and 1% in US.

This is assuming you actually want to sustain your wealth, of course...

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

On the topic of how to not waste your life: make no compromises and do exactly what you believe in.

 

[washti]

Where do you get that 2-4% return though? There is obviously no way you get that from interest atm. Short term government bonds have negative yield in Europe and 1% in US.

This is assuming you actually want to sustain your wealth, of course...

This is not return from investments.
2-4 % =SWR (Safe Withdrawal Rates )from your already accumulated capital (30X annual expenses)
BTW advise goes that you should invests in stocks.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

This is not return from investments.
2-4 % =SWR (Safe Withdrawal Rates )from your already accumulated capital (30X annual expenses)
BTW advise goes that you should invests in stocks.

Obviously you need to assume a certain return in order to justify this withdrawal rate. But I see from wikipedia that this SWR assumes a pure stock portfolio as the investment -- something no sane person would actually do.

 

[Reluctantly]

^ actually, 2-4% is extremely modest for stock returns. You can diversify a lot and make small gains with low risk. Now if the market crashes, then you might have to get a part time job (or part time income method) until it stabilizes again, but it's meh. I think in the us you need about 750k to live like that with a house and a million if you have no property. It's a lot, but it works.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

^ actually, 2-4% is extremely modest for stock returns. You can diversify a lot and make small gains with low risk. Now if the market crashes, then you might have to get a part time job (or part time income method) until it stabilizes again, but it's meh. I think in the us you need about 750k to live like that with a house and a million if you have no property. It's a lot, but it works.

Low risk? People seem to be forgetting that the market crashes at frequent intervals – last time in 2007 when it dropped 50%. Diversification is a bogus concept invented by economists.

 

[Reluctantly]

Right, but even when it crashes it goes back up again. You'd just have to supplement your income for awhile.

But if you want to bet on crashes, you could put a portion of the money aside and invest it when the crash happens. That's probably the smartest option. But that's assuming there are going to be frequent crashes. And it's hard to predict crashes; supposedly we've gone a while without a crash and a lot of people say that means one is coming, but that doesn't mean anything by itself.

Personally, if I had that kind of money, I think I'd invest in crypto-mining instead because the potential payoff is much higher and the hardware is worth something, not to mention the benefits of decentralized banking, but stocks can work too.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Right, but even when it crashes it goes back up again. You'd just have to supplement your income for awhile.

But if you want to bet on crashes, you could put a portion of the money aside and invest it when the crash happens. That's probably the smartest option. But that's assuming there are going to be frequent crashes. And it's hard to predict crashes; supposedly we've gone a while without a crash and a lot of people say that means one is coming, but that doesn't mean anything by itself.

Personally, if I had that kind of money, I think I'd invest in crypto-mining instead because the potential payoff is much higher and the hardware is worth something, not to mention the benefits of decentralized banking, but stocks can work too.

I would say there are many deep flaws with these propositions, and an exposition of them is not an easy matter, but let me just point to the fact that you are looking at history from the vantage point of having observed the market repeatedly recover in an effective fashion. There is a survivalship bias in this analysis – you are looking at the portfolios which survived, and conditionally on having survived they tended to recover in the past. That is certainly not a property of markets in general. For example the Nikkei index has been in a downtrend for 30 years. You can also take any single stock that exists to date and say: look, it has always recovered in the past, so you should just buy it when it dips. Here you are committing the mistake of not looking at the cemetery of failed stocks.

 

[washti]

Obviously you need to assume a certain return in order to justify this withdrawal rate. But I see from wikipedia that this SWR assumes a pure stock portfolio as the investment -- something no sane person would actually do.

You just need be 2-4% above inflation rate to keep principal.
And this is already money for 30 years. Assuming you living costs dont skyrocket.
After acumulation you can put principal on index fund if active investing is too scary.

In ERE system bulilding your capital is mostly done by saving 70-80% of income and being frugal - living 5-7k $ year per person. I observed that for many people from west countries this is extrimely frugal, but considering my on lifestyle - and living in Poland is not that severe at all. In 2016 my annual expences were 7874 zl = 2119,34 $. I'm badass.

 

[Reluctantly]

@serac
That's why you

1. Research and try to make good investments. - invest in realistic potential
2. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. - diversify
3. Update your portfolio every 6 months or so.

And if a massive crash happens and all stocks drop because people are pulling money from the stock market, you can take your cash you had on the side and buy stocks for a good deal (after doing 1. above).

I really don't think it's that complicated.

 

[washti]

@Serac
I' mostly interested in principles of value investing from Ben Graham and his current continuators - Buffet and Munger.

You invest in stocks which have intristic value. They have to be underpriced to keep safety margin for market fluctuations. You bay them when market crash and people panic, sell when shit is overpriced.

Market crash like this in 2007 is great oportunity for investor. Pitty I was muderfucking teen then and didnt have clue about money. Not that I know a lot now. Constant learnig, sir.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

@serac
That's why you

1. Research and try to make good investments. - invest in realistic potential

What is a "good investment"? Do you suppose anyone in the market seeks to do bad investments? You can't just define a good investment as something that makes money no matter what and suppose you make that investment – this would imply you can magically predict the prices while nobody else in the market can.

2. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. - diversify

This doesn't work. You need certain assumptions for this, like independently distributed price movements and finite variance. These assumptions, as mentioned, exist only in the heads of economists and have consistently been proven to be wrong.

3. Update your portfolio every 6 months or so.

not sure what this is supposed to achieve

And if a massive crash happens and all stocks drop because people are pulling money from the stock market, you can take your cash you had on the side and buy stocks for a good deal (after doing 1. above).

How do you suppose you will do this without a magical spirit appearing before you and revealing to you that the crash has officially reached the bottom? You have to consider that if it were possible to predict the bottom of a crash, the crash wouldn't exist in the first place. The reason people are selling during a crash, is that they believe the future prices will be lower.

In essence, one cannot think of the market as some sort of mechanical process that's just there for you to exploit. The market is the aggregation of other people's decisions. And let me tell you that the people who move the market are typically very sophisticated traders. The competition is quite fierce, and traders have typically good reasons for buying or selling a certain asset. If you think you have a good investment strategy that outperforms the market, you are tacitly assuming that you are somehow smarter than these traders, or that you have access to information they don't have. Unless you have good reasons to believe such a thing, you are probably the sucker at the table.

 

[Reluctantly]

What is a "good investment"? Do you suppose anyone in the market seeks to do bad investments? You can't just define a good investment as something that makes money no matter what and suppose you make that investment – this would imply you can magically predict the prices while nobody else in the market can.

The invester needs to assess the validity of a business model and its potential for growth. This is pure business sense. And each business needs to be weighed on its own merits. I imply nothing else.

This doesn't work. You need certain assumptions for this, like independently distributed price movements and finite variance. These assumptions, as mentioned, exist only in the heads of economists and have consistently been proven to be wrong.
not sure what this is supposed to achieve
How do you suppose you will do this without a magical spirit appearing before you and revealing to you that the crash has officially reached the bottom? You have to consider that if it were possible to predict the bottom of a crash, the crash wouldn't exist in the first place. The reason people are selling during a crash, is that they believe the future prices will be lower.

The goal isn't to invest at the bottom, but to take advantage of stocks that have become undervalued. That's it. And diversifying only helps to minimize risk; it doesn't mean you no longer have any risk. That's all. Please stop implying things that aren't there. It feels like you have an agenda here.

In essence, one cannot think of the market as some sort of mechanical process that's just there for you to exploit. The market is the aggregation of other people's decisions. And let me tell you that the people who move the market are typically very sophisticated traders. The competition is quite fierce, and traders have typically good reasons for buying or selling a certain asset. If you think you have a good investment strategy that outperforms the market, you are tacitly assuming that you are somehow smarter than these traders, or that you have access to information they don't have. Unless you have good reasons to believe such a thing, you are probably the sucker at the table.

A crash happens because of three major reasons
1. A lot of people lose money that they need. Maybe they lose a job or unexpected expenses come up.
2. Those people take out their investments and savings to cover their expenses.
3. Stocks plunge and people get scared, so they plunge further while other people panic sell.

So a lot of stocks become simply undervalued by the panic-sellers that didn't need to sell, but were afraid of how far they would fall. I think crashes have a lot more to do with psychology than anything else. Yes, maybe this is my assumption, but it's also a very real phenomenon when trading stocks. Good traders try to get bad news before everyone else, so they can sell high and buy somewhere at the bottom of the panic-selling dips.

So you don't need to know the bottom in a crash. You just need to buy in somewhere before or after it hits bottom. I prefer after because then you have an idea that the panic has stopped or at least wanned.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

The invester needs to assess the validity of a business model and its potential for growth. This is pure business sense. And each business needs to be weighed on its own merits. I imply nothing else.



The goal isn't to invest at the bottom, but to take advantage of stocks that have become undervalued. That's it. And diversifying only helps to minimize risk; it doesn't mean you no longer have any risk. That's all. Please stop implying things that aren't there. It feels like you have an agenda here.

I don't have an agenda, I just tell you that as someone who used to work in finance and done thousands of trades, in my opinion these ideas are quite simplistic and naive. When I say diversification doesn't work, I don't suppose you think risk can be completely removed. It's obvious that this is impossible. However, the effect of diversification is a concept mostly coming from Markowitz portfolio theory, which says that the variance of a portfolio decreases as you add more assets to it. This is an erroneous and dangerous idea, because it makes you vastly over-optimistic about the risk you are actually incurring. This has been repeatedly proven throughout history. In 2008 you would lose 50% of all your money no matter how well diversified you would have been. This fact is in severe conflict with the calculations derived from portfolio theory where such an event would be practically impossible. It's true that a portfolio of 10 stocks is probably less volatile than a portfolio of a single stock, but not to the extent that you can make credible estimates of its volatility in the future. It's the latter that is the important part, because otherwise it's like saying it's safer to play Russian roulette than it is to jump out of a plane without a parachute. It's true, but you would probably prefer neither.

A crash happens because of three major reasons
1. A lot of people lose money that they need. Maybe they lose a job or unexpected expenses come up.
2. Those people take out their investments and savings to cover their expenses.
3. Stocks plunge and people get scared, so they plunge further while other people panic sell.

So a lot of stocks become simply undervalued by the panic-sellers that didn't need to sell, but were afraid of how far they would fall. I think crashes have a lot more to do with psychology than anything else. Yes, maybe this is my assumption, but it's also a very real phenomenon when trading stocks. Good traders try to get bad news before everyone else, so they can sell high and buy somewhere at the bottom of the panic-selling dips.

So you don't need to know the bottom in a crash. You just need to buy in somewhere before or after it hits bottom. I prefer after because then you have an idea that the panic has stopped or at least wanned.

Again, I would have to ask you – where on earth do you attain the knowledge of exactly when a crash has reached its bottom? It doesn't help to say that you can just buy after the crash – there is not going to be an announcement in the news saying "folks, the crash is over". It's true, btw, that certain circumstances force traders to liquidate positions against their beliefs, and this can create temporary mispricing of certain stocks, but you seem to assume that as long as stocks have dropped a lot, they are automatically underpriced. Again I encourage you to look at the graph of the Nikkei index since 1984 – it's had a lot of crashes and it hasn't recovered for the last 30 years. Following your reasoning, you would buy after the initial crash in the 80s and still be underwater to this day.

I wouldn't necessarily say the investment idea is conceptually wrong, its just that the reality of things are vastly more complicated than what you would find in the typical get-rich-in-10-easy-steps book.

 

[washti]

Serac what you know about value investing as a trader? Did you met people who invest this way? Where you worked? What trade you mostly did? Could you maybe have some ideas, why people like Buffet didnt lost 50% of his portfolio value?(Although he lost money ~>3 billion$)
This is not idea from get rich easy in 10-east-steps book. Author of ERE (and people from other countries on forum board there) made it in US.- he worked first as a nuclear astrophysicst then as a quant.

 

[baccheion]

- Work on what you're interested in
- Don't waste time on things you aren't interested in
- Find someone/some-thing else to handle whatever you don't enjoy doing (or figure out a way to ensure you don't have to deal with them)
- Get away from or avoid people that try to sabotage you
- Meditation and/or brainwave entrainment
- Nootropics (N-acetyl semax amidate, P21, PRL-8-53 + coluracetam, etc)

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Serac what you know about value investing as a trader? Did you met people who invest this way? Where you worked? What trade you mostly did? Could you maybe have some ideas, why people like Buffet didnt lost 50% of his portfolio value?(Although he lost money ~>3 billion$)
This is not idea from get rich easy in 10-east-steps book. Author of ERE (and people from other countries on forum board there) made it in US.- he worked first as a nuclear astrophysicst then as a quant.

I would have to admit I haven't had much exposure to value investing. But I am mostly just talking about various propositions regarding market volatility, risk and the general theory of trading and investment – these are general concepts that hold true regardless of the particular strategy. As mentioned, I am not opposed to this particular investment idea as a concept – mostly because I don't know what it actually promises and what its track record is. I worked in a hedge fund doing statistical arbitrage.

 

[Reluctantly]

I don't have an agenda, I just tell you that as someone who used to work in finance and done thousands of trades, in my opinion these ideas are quite simplistic and naive. When I say diversification doesn't work, I don't suppose you think risk can be completely removed. It's obvious that this is impossible. However, the effect of diversification is a concept mostly coming from Markowitz portfolio theory, which says that the variance of a portfolio decreases as you add more assets to it. This is an erroneous and dangerous idea, because it makes you vastly over-optimistic about the risk you are actually incurring. This has been repeatedly proven throughout history. In 2008 you would lose 50% of all your money no matter how well diversified you would have been. This fact is in severe conflict with the calculations derived from portfolio theory where such an event would be practically impossible. It's true that a portfolio of 10 stocks is probably less volatile than a portfolio of a single stock, but not to the extent that you can make credible estimates of its volatility in the future. It's the latter that is the important part, because otherwise it's like saying it's safer to play Russian roulette than it is to jump out of a plane without a parachute. It's true, but you would probably prefer neither.
Again, I would have to ask you – where on earth do you attain the knowledge of exactly when a crash has reached its bottom? It doesn't help to say that you can just buy after the crash – there is not going to be an announcement in the news saying "folks, the crash is over". It's true, btw, that certain circumstances force traders to liquidate positions against their beliefs, and this can create temporary mispricing of certain stocks, but you seem to assume that as long as stocks have dropped a lot, they are automatically underpriced. Again I encourage you to look at the graph of the Nikkei index since 1984 – it's had a lot of crashes and it hasn't recovered for the last 30 years. Following your reasoning, you would buy after the initial crash in the 80s and still be underwater to this day.

I wouldn't necessarily say the investment idea is conceptually wrong, its just that the reality of things are vastly more complicated than what you would find in the typical get-rich-in-10-easy-steps book.

Dude, if you approach the stock market with a formula, instead of fostering and using good business sense that keeps up with economic trends, that's like blindly throwing money around.

And value investing is just a strategy to leverage the psychology of panic-sellers and short-selling to your favor. You buy in at any time during a crash and hold a long time til the price goes back up and you make a profit. You pay little in fees and take advantage of the panic-sellers. But you still have to do your homework on what stocks to buy; obviously if you buy into a bad or failing business model, the stock won't magically go up again. Why do I even have to state this?

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Dude, if you approach the stock market with a formula, instead of fostering and using good business sense that keeps up with economic trends, that's like blindly throwing money around.

And value investing is just a strategy to leverage the psychology of panic-sellers and short-selling to your favor. You buy in at any time during a crash and hold a long time til the price goes back up and you make a profit. You pay little in fees and take advantage of the panic-sellers. But you still have to do your homework on what stocks to buy; obviously if you buy into a bad or failing business model, the stock won't magically go up again. Why do I even have to state this?

Well, there would be many things that are unclear to me about this. Like, even though you have a method for finding "value", you still need to figure out whether the current market price is lower or higher than it should be. How do you figure that out? And how does one define "panic selling"? Are there metrics for measuring that, or do you just say that any time the price goes down someone is panic selling?

The advantage of using a formula is that you can make rigorous statistical tests of your claims using historical data.

 

[washti]

Well, there would be many things that are unclear to me about this. Like, even though you have a method for finding "value", you still need to figure out whether the current market price is lower or higher than it should be. How do you figure that out? And how does one define "panic selling"? Are there metrics for measuring that, or do you just say that any time the price goes down someone is panic selling?

The advantage of using a formula is that you can make rigorous statistical tests of your claims using historical data.

http://www.investopedia.com/university/value-investing/
Read if you have time. Maybe you will find smth for your questions.

 

[Reluctantly]

Well, there would be many things that are unclear to me about this. Like, even though you have a method for finding "value", you still need to figure out whether the current market price is lower or higher than it should be. How do you figure that out? And how does one define "panic selling"? Are there metrics for measuring that, or do you just say that any time the price goes down someone is panic selling?

The advantage of using a formula is that you can make rigorous statistical tests of your claims using historical data.

I mean I can't,
Imo, this is how I view stocks and stock like assets, as foolish as you might see it,

The problem with investing in general (or at least in stocks that don't pay dividends) is that the price can be an entirely subjective evaluation. Holding stock can give someone a percentage of the company, but its value in liquidity usually isn't anywhere near the price you pay for the stock. The stock market includes all types of people that invest for many different reasons. Sometimes things goes up in price simply because it sounds like the next big thing and people want to be 1st in, despite the fact that if it's popular, they probably missed the boat already.

For example, I invested some money in ethereum at $14, it went to $20, then crashed to $8 because of the DAO "hack". Details aside, I still believed in the crypto as something businesses might adopt because of its contracts and ability to create your own crypto backend on top of the network; and it has backing of major banks. But anyway, I held on to those coins and now I think they are worth ~$190. And why did it go up in price? No one seems to know, but there's been a lot of good press about ethereum, some banks and businesses are making plans to use it (including the us government) and a lot of ICOs have taken advantage of it as well. I don't have charts or graphs, but the DAO "hack" created panic selling that didn't somehow mean ethereum was going to die. The crypto still had value.

Another example, when Steve Jobs died, investors became worried about Apple continuing its success without him. The stock dipped, but Apple isn't Steve Jobs and the company seems to still be successful. Panic selling.

Or take amazon. The company is continually expanding and spending money in research and improvement. So its profit margins are low. Yet people are willing to buy into the stock at values that don't justify the asset liquidity of the stock or its profit margins. So why is it so expensive? Personally, I think it's popularity. Amazon continually gets more and more good press as it becomes the walmart of the internet and more and more people use it. I did hold on to some amazon stock for a bit, but sold it a while ago, as I feel uneasy about how high the price has gotten. Doesn't mean it won't go to $2000 or $3000 or whatever before hitting a bubble and crashing as soon as Amazon finds some kind of trouble, but I'm not comfortable with its price. And I don't believe the cloud computing and drones and Alexa computers are going to become that profitable. I mean let's be honest, Alexa is kind of a gimmick, Google, microsoft, oracle, etc. also do cloud computing, and drones only work well in cities where it's easy to fly somewhere than drive through congestion (not that it won't help cuts costs there overall, but they are expensive and delicate aerospace machines and it won't be an amazing thing for the same reason we drive cars and not airplanes).

Does that give you an idea where I'm coming from?

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

I mean I can't,
Imo, this is how I view stocks and stock like assets, as foolish as you might see it,

The problem with investing in general (or at least in stocks that don't pay dividends) is that the price can be an entirely subjective evaluation. Holding stock can give someone a percentage of the company, but its value in liquidity usually isn't anywhere near the price you pay for the stock. The stock market includes all types of people that invest for many different reasons. Sometimes things goes up in price simply because it sounds like the next big thing and people want to be 1st in, despite the fact that if it's popular, they probably missed the boat already.

All prices in the market are dictated by expectations about the future. It wouldn't make sense to buy stock purely based on company assets. You typically don't get any of the assets as a share holder – most of them are distributed amongst the company's creditors (e.g. bond holders) if something bad happens.

But ultimately, you have to decide what philosophy you have towards investment. Most people who use stocks as vehicles for returns don't actually believe they can predict the stock market. It's both impossible and unnecessary if you believe in modern portfolio theory. The whole idea is to just get paid risk premia for holding the stocks. In fact, all the countless strategies out there that purport to give you higher returns than the market, are usually just strategies that expose you to various risk factors which are not readily apparent. This tended to be the conclusion about almost any strategy I researched at my previous job.

The alternative view is that you can actually outperform the market. The tacit assumption here is that you are better than the market at interpreting data. I think it's definitely possible, but in that case you have to ask yourself: what is my edge over everyone else in the market. For example, what makes you think you are smarter than teams of mathematicians, analysts, market specialists and traders in banks and hedge funds? If it's just "panic selling", again you are 1) assuming these professionals are somehow a bunch of dumb, emotional creatures, and 2) you can successfully compete against certain market participants like high-frequency traders and proprietary trading companies who specialize in exploiting these kinds of situations.

Sorry if I'm ruining some of the fun here, but this is just my stance on things market-related: always be very skeptical.

 

[Reluctantly]

But the thing I find funny about people following graphs and charts and analysis is that any action they take because of those charts not only changes the market, but their models depend on the market acting predictably. If for example, day traders try to sell high and buy low, they themselves could be the cause of a stock crashing just because their logic or algorithms say to take their money and run. And the more people invested in that model of prediction and the worse the crash becomes. I mean it's ironic that the people that try to predict the market with models and math just become predictable themselves, while the market remains mostly unpredictable.

So I guess I'm skeptical about people that try to analyze or mathematically model the market over someone that tries to understand what's going, including the psychology of the market, and makes decisions about realistic long-term worth over trying to predict things or using models to try and make short-term gains. With the former, it's less about worrying what the market is doing and more about long term potential, while the latter only seems to care about predicting the market (no thanks).

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

So I guess I'm skeptical about people that try to analyze or mathematically model the market over someone that tries to understand what's going, including the psychology of the market, and makes decisions about realistic long-term worth over trying to predict things or using models to try and make short-term gains. With the former, it's less about worrying what the market is doing and more about long term potential, while the latter only seems to care about predicting the market (no thanks).

Modeling in the context of speculation is really just about formalizing one's hypotheses. If you think for example some fundamentals like company assets are good predictors of future performance, you can try to test this hypothesis using historical data. It doesn't have to be short-term predictions. What you should be skeptical about are mere well-sounding narratives like "investing based on fundamentals is good because it's based on long term worth". It's not like God will come down from heaven at some point and give everyone who did this kind of investing their fair share. It's just a statistical hypothesis like everything else.

Real estate is a good example in this context. Everyone is yapping about how real estate is the best shit ever because supposedly it never loses value, whereas historically, it hasn't provided better returns than just the inflation rate.

PS
Apologies if I come across as very brash about all this. It's just that in the world of finance there is so much bullshit and nonsense that I have become very sensitive about it.

 

[Green]

lol serac's doing the intp "NOTHING WORKS BECAUSE IVE THOUGHT OF IT ALL"

your simulator is low yield. someone is saying "ive done this thing and its worked for me" and you're blasting about how things are statistically unsafe. investing is risky. there is no 100% safe investment. dont invest everything you have into your portfolio obviously. only invest what you can lose, reinvest your profits, learn from your bad gambles.

 

[aopef]

Nearly every human being seems a slave of the society they have made. Ain't it sad?

 

[washti]

^ It is.
I just read some of u g krishnamurti again. It always put me in the "everyone is system" mood.

 

[majohnso]

agreed with OP, its taken me a long time to realise some of those items, but they really help working against my intp nature at times

 

[sushi]

time, energy, work, money

I seperate it into these four dimensions

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

aw but i have the best fun when i'm wasting my life (

 

[sushi]

more insights:

(1) every new day is a new blank piece of paper, you get to choose what to put on it.

(2) write a diary review at the end of month to see how you spent your time and what mistakes and shit you have done, and reflect on it, what you can do to improve on next month.

(3) if you have too many things to do in a day, choose two ignore the rest. there is opportunity cost.

(4) what do you want to maximize in your time, what do you want to minimize ?

 

[Black Rose]

I kind of wasted my life.
But I tried as hard as I could.
It all was just too hard.
I was not self-confident enough.
I simply was directionless.

I like pretty things.
I like cool things.
I like puzzles.

Sometimes life is too hard.
Sometimes there is nothing to do.

I hold on to the higher realities in my mind.
The places that have existed and will exist.

unexamined life not worth living?
no matter what existential despair.
my life is not wasted, I think things.
Ecstacy in a world of indifference.
Done to the least of these you've done to me.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

The most general principal I can think of is: Don't set goals. Develop habits.

 

[elliptoid]

what about habitually setting goals