Trading the stockmarket (NO Referrals)

Soldato
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It's also gambling, you're betting that your educated guess is the correct guess

Likewise people "investing" in crypto are betting that they are right that the price will go higher

Your original post was crying that people shouldn't be discussing GME or crypto in this thread because it's gambling and neither are valuable, the same could be said for any share that doesn't offer dividends if you want to get snobby people should only disucss and invest in companies that offer dividends, that is true investing everything else is gambling :)

There's absolutely nothing wrong with discussing crypto or GME they're both relevant in this crazy new paradigm in the markets and "investing"

What's the saying ? "don't invest what you can't afford to lose" I wonder why they say if it isn't gambling :rolleyes:

No investing is speculating, but not gambling. You don't understand the difference, my post is to explain it.

Maybe i am using the wrong terminology. Thats why i am trying to explain it rather than posting short statements.

The border between what is gambling and investing would change depending on how risk adverse someone might be.

That is not my definition, gambling is something that cannot be valued, or that it is entirely accepted that its a negative valuation.

Betting on roulette is gambling because expected return is negative. The reason GME is gambling is because the value of the company is clearly accepted by all to be a fraction of its price, and so the expected return is negative.

Its not for me to say what a value of a company is, its for you to say. And if you buy something for more than you value it, then that's gambling.

There is no paradigm shift of any kind, its not changed since the beginning of time and it will never change
 
Soldato
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You should go look up what the definition is of speculating

You can minimise risk through strategies, just as a pro poker player will use maths to lower their risk, but it's ultimately gambling

As i've said

Yes you can minimize risk.

No you cannot use math to lower risk in poker, only to calculate rough expected return on the assumption you know what someone else roughly has.

Poker is not gambling, its not investing either, its gaming.

You still dont know what the difference is
 
Soldato
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If you say so

I'm trying to teach you some things you have clearly no idea about, all you can do is quote single sentences, or out of context.

Poker is only not gambling if no money is involved! But even then you can be pedantic and say it is gambling due to the nature of the game.

Poker is not gambling, but a person could gamble via poker. This is not the same thing, and the exact same applies to stocks.

If you play against opponents worse than you, over time you will certainly make money on poker. If the opponents are better than you, then you will lose over time. It is not gambling

You can get unlucky at times, and lose, and also lucky, and you can observe fluctuations in this.

The EV chart is always very stable and always intersects with the actual result eventually.

The key is valuation of stocks to define gambling, the reason most people here are gambling is because they do not even attempt to value stocks. Without a valuation you have no idea when to sell or buy. Because you have no idea you are gambling.

If you are simply wrong, you are just a bad investor.
 
Associate
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101
I'm trying to teach you some things you have clearly no idea about, all you can do is quote single sentences, or out of context.



Poker is not gambling, but a person could gamble via poker. This is not the same thing, and the exact same applies to stocks.

If you play against opponents worse than you, over time you will certainly make money on poker. If the opponents are better than you, then you will lose over time. It is not gambling

You can get unlucky at times, and lose, and also lucky, and you can observe fluctuations in this.

The EV chart is always very stable and always intersects with the actual result eventually.

The key is valuation of stocks to define gambling, the reason most people here are gambling is because they do not even attempt to value stocks. Without a valuation you have no idea when to sell or buy. Because you have no idea you are gambling.

If you are simply wrong, you are just a bad investor.

You should look up the definition of gambling.....

  • Play games of chance for money; bet.

    ‘he gambles on football’
    1. 1.1with object Bet (a sum of money)

      ‘they gambled their money on cards’
  • 2Take risky action in the hope of a desired result.
 
Associate
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I've always seen it as gambling is based on a event and the output is binary win/lose.

Investing has a range of outputs from worst case to best case and you invest based on your understanding of where you think the expected value range will fall
 
Soldato
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You should look up the definition of gambling.....

  • Play games of chance for money; bet.

    ‘he gambles on football’
    1. 1.1with object Bet (a sum of money)

      ‘they gambled their money on cards’
  • 2Take risky action in the hope of a desired result.

Poker is gaming, not gambling. That definition is not relevent to anything i am talking about. I am explaining my use of the term how i have applied it, and you can use your brain to figure out what i mean by that. instead of quoting definitions.
 
Associate
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Poker is gaming, not gambling. That definition is not relevent to anything i am talking about. I am explaining my use of the term how i have applied it, and you can use your brain to figure out what i mean by that. instead of quoting definitions.

Haha OK, I suppose Ice isn't cold either ;)
 
Associate
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Poker is gaming, not gambling. That definition is not relevent to anything i am talking about. I am explaining my use of the term how i have applied it, and you can use your brain to figure out what i mean by that. instead of quoting definitions.

Correct. Poker is a game of skill aka gaming, gambling is where there is no skill involved just random chance. I would argue sports betting could also be considered skill based, except the bookies have supercomputers that you will never beat in the long run and fluctuating odds whereas if it were a simple 1/1 win/lose-say in Tennis there wouldn't be any bookies. The game is rigged.

The stock market falls into 3 categories:

1) Dividend paying stocks, these have intrinsic value aka the stock price is correlated to the dividend payout and it's value compared to macro-economic fluctuations such as interest rates.

2) Liquidation value, if a company is liquidated what are their assets divided by shares outstanding? GME is a good example of this at $4 it had a market cap of only $250m and yet $500m in assets minus debt. If it ceased trading you'd double your money as an investor, you literally couldn't lose. This is another form of instrinsic value like dividends.

3) Everything else. This is worth zero, nothing, zip on an instrinsic basis. It's value is based entirely on supply and demand, what you think you can sell it for to someone else at a future date. The only value comes from what someone else is willing to pay, you don't even get a stock certificate to wipe your arse anymore.
This is also where the skill comes in, determining what someone will pay at a future date/what you can buy it for at a future date. If you think the price will go up you buy it to sell later. If you think it will go down you short it to buy back later and pocket the difference. Now many people predict "value" based on revenue, profit or future earnings. This is somewhat important because if a stock get's too low another business can come in and do a takeover because it has intrinsic value to them. Otherwise this is just an easy correlation people use to predict supply/demand. Anothr valuation could be based on short interest like GME where people HAVE to buy the stock at any price. This gives it value.

Ultimately in the third case which is the majority of stocks, you as an individual investor will never get any money from your investment until you sell. This requires a buyer. So it is entirely a social game, at what price do you think someone will buy at a future date aka what do they personally value it at. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

@Minusorange If you're gambling on the stock market then you're essentially playing every hand in a game of poker thinking it's roulette. You are the reason 97% of retail investors lose money if they directly trade in the stock market. Either learn the skills of the game or you will be taken to the cleaners. I would suggest only putting your money in Mutual funds and indexes until you adjust your veiwpoint and learn how to play the game.
 
Soldato
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Waiting for a catastrophic event to happen, I dunno meteor to hit the earth in a major population centre, and cause shockwaves round the globe and all the after effects. Then you'll know if you were gambling, investing, speculating, or whatever else people want to call it, money isn't real anyway dunno what you are all worried about :D :p
 
Caporegime
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No investing is speculating, but not gambling. You don't understand the difference, my post is to explain it.

Maybe i am using the wrong terminology. Thats why i am trying to explain it rather than posting short statements.

The border between what is gambling and investing would change depending on how risk adverse someone might be.

That is not my definition, gambling is something that cannot be valued, or that it is entirely accepted that its a negative valuation.

Betting on roulette is gambling because expected return is negative. The reason GME is gambling is because the value of the company is clearly accepted by all to be a fraction of its price, and so the expected return is negative.

Its not for me to say what a value of a company is, its for you to say. And if you buy something for more than you value it, then that's gambling.

There is no paradigm shift of any kind, its not changed since the beginning of time and it will never change

So your argument appears to be that something is only gambling if you expect to lose?
 
Associate
Joined
27 Sep 2004
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723
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London
I tried to catch the falling knife of tech stocks at the end of last week. I appear to have missed the bottom by about 5% but they've had a very good run the last couple of days. We look to be in for another red day today but I'm not too bothered as I'll be holding long term. I do need to sell a few shares soon though as I think I'm overexposed in some companies, mainly AMD.

There's been a worrying drop in trade between UK and EU since the new trading rules began. Hopefully this is just teething problems and not a long term indicator of our future trading partnership. The UK could see some good growth in the coming years, as Brexit uncertainty has kept investors away over the past 5 years, but reports like this still make me nervous to increase my exposure to the UK.
 
Associate
Joined
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449
keep reading this but not doing anything about it lol. always wanted to invest and that but cant really dedicate a lot of time to this per day
 
Soldato
Joined
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Bucks
Same. Got in via a discounted Primary Bid offer at 200p per share, with placing tomorrow.

My ARB shares were dropped into my HL account this morning. Sold my original stake's worth straight away at 238bps, so now have some free ARB shares to watch and hopefully see grow!
 
Soldato
Joined
25 Nov 2007
Posts
5,581
Location
London
Correct. Poker is a game of skill aka gaming, gambling is where there is no skill involved just random chance. I would argue sports betting could also be considered skill based, except the bookies have supercomputers that you will never beat in the long run and fluctuating odds whereas if it were a simple 1/1 win/lose-say in Tennis there wouldn't be any bookies. The game is rigged.

The stock market falls into 3 categories:

1) Dividend paying stocks, these have intrinsic value aka the stock price is correlated to the dividend payout and it's value compared to macro-economic fluctuations such as interest rates.

2) Liquidation value, if a company is liquidated what are their assets divided by shares outstanding? GME is a good example of this at $4 it had a market cap of only $250m and yet $500m in assets minus debt. If it ceased trading you'd double your money as an investor, you literally couldn't lose. This is another form of instrinsic value like dividends.

3) Everything else. This is worth zero, nothing, zip on an instrinsic basis. It's value is based entirely on supply and demand, what you think you can sell it for to someone else at a future date. The only value comes from what someone else is willing to pay, you don't even get a stock certificate to wipe your arse anymore.
This is also where the skill comes in, determining what someone will pay at a future date/what you can buy it for at a future date. If you think the price will go up you buy it to sell later. If you think it will go down you short it to buy back later and pocket the difference. Now many people predict "value" based on revenue, profit or future earnings. This is somewhat important because if a stock get's too low another business can come in and do a takeover because it has intrinsic value to them. Otherwise this is just an easy correlation people use to predict supply/demand. Anothr valuation could be based on short interest like GME where people HAVE to buy the stock at any price. This gives it value.

Ultimately in the third case which is the majority of stocks, you as an individual investor will never get any money from your investment until you sell. This requires a buyer. So it is entirely a social game, at what price do you think someone will buy at a future date aka what do they personally value it at. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

@Minusorange If you're gambling on the stock market then you're essentially playing every hand in a game of poker thinking it's roulette. You are the reason 97% of retail investors lose money if they directly trade in the stock market. Either learn the skills of the game or you will be taken to the cleaners. I would suggest only putting your money in Mutual funds and indexes until you adjust your veiwpoint and learn how to play the game.

The point of what i said is to define, investing vs gambling, and that a person could be extremely aggressive in their investing, but its only gambling when either its unvaluable/negative expected, or that they do not attempt to value something to then act on that valuation.

I don't really rate any companies as zero, i value them lower or higher than their price. Its only bitcoin that is zero in theory. You can say its worth £2.99 or £2million, and there is no possible argument to say who is right

Sure you can also value on short interest, i guess, but nobody is actually doing that, someone would have done that before it got into the news. I guess a few people at WSB actually did do that, combined it with hype and made a hell of a lot of money.

They are not gambling, they are geniuses. The guy posting on here now, is gambling, there is no discussion to be had from gambling, it is not trading, it is not investing.

But actually the entire point of this discussion over the last couple of pages is just to answer the following post by dyson, or explain anyway.

The most amusing thing about the whole GME thing has been the snobby views of some "investors".

So your argument appears to be that something is only gambling if you expect to lose?

Yes, or that it is not possible to know or reasonably guess the expected outcome on average. I am not attempting to change the entire definition of it. Its important that someone says X, then explains what they mean, which is what i am trying to do, but other people simply only skim read key words or statements.
 
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