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gridlockd commented on The pandemic turned my parents into day traders   wsj.com/articles/the-pand... · Posted by u/lxm
codethief · 5 years ago
I have had similar discussions with friends who invested their money in single stocks by very few companies (instead of getting, say, ETF shares) and my POV has always been this:

1. You cannot beat the market (i.e. ETFs) for two reasons: A) The market consists mostly of institutional investors. Institutional investors spend an enormous amount of time and money on making sure that they come out on top. B) The fact that institutional investors spend so much time and money on evaluating stocks means that all possible information about a company, i.e. all future expectations about the company and all risks have already been priced in and the market is efficient (in the economic sense). In particular, the future stock price development is by definition unpredictable and mostly random because it will be based on future information that does not exist yet.

2. As a corollary of 1), you get profits not for knowing a company well and assessing their valuation accurately (all this has already been priced in at the time you buy the shares!), you reap profits for enduring risk. The higher the risk, the higher the potential profits (or the loss).

3. Sure, arbitrage exists. But again, who is going to be more likely to discover opportunities for arbitrage? An institutional investor or a stay-at-home mom?

gridlockd · 5 years ago
Efficient market hypothesis is nonsense. A lot of institutional investors are long-only. That is their mandate. All the information they may have does not change that fact.

It is unlikely that you will beat the market in the long run and if you do, it may well be down to chance, but it is possible, because the market is not perfect.

Furthermore, you can not "buy the market" in the first place. You can buy ETFs replicating stock indices, but that is not the same. If you bought the S&P you will have performed differently than if you had bought MSCI world. Ultimately, stock picking is just a less diversified version of buying an index.

gridlockd commented on Supercharging TensorFlow.js with SIMD and multi-threading   blog.tensorflow.org/2020/... · Posted by u/Marat_Dukhan
the_svd_doctor · 5 years ago
Why? You could export your weights and everything into any other framework, no?
gridlockd · 5 years ago
Tensorflow-JS is that framework that you export to from Tensorflow. Tensorflow-JS is not Tensorflow, it's just the same brand.
gridlockd commented on PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab   mashable.com/article/epik... · Posted by u/aspenmayer
gridlockd · 5 years ago
Unfortunately, the self-styled "anti-racists" of today are giving me a tough time convincing actual Neonazis that there isn't some sort jewish marxist conspiracy out there to censor them.
gridlockd · 5 years ago
Smash that downvote button to make society more just and less racist!
gridlockd commented on PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab   mashable.com/article/epik... · Posted by u/aspenmayer
some_furry · 5 years ago
gridlockd · 5 years ago
That "tiny minority" still has an outsized impact. The pareto principle applies to pretty much everything.
gridlockd commented on PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab   mashable.com/article/epik... · Posted by u/aspenmayer
chaganated · 5 years ago
Gab is a non-entity, and McInness is a bad joke. PayPal has just given both of them 10,000x more credibility than they ever had.

The Streisandining continues.

gridlockd · 5 years ago
So you're saying that telling people to shut up will not actually change their minds and make the world a better place?

I don't like that. I'll give you a downvote, that will set things right!

gridlockd commented on PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab   mashable.com/article/epik... · Posted by u/aspenmayer
gridlockd · 5 years ago
Unfortunately, the self-styled "anti-racists" of today are giving me a tough time convincing actual Neonazis that there isn't some sort jewish marxist conspiracy out there to censor them.
gridlockd commented on Reverse-engineering the problematic tail behavior of Fivethirtyeight forecast   statmodeling.stat.columbi... · Posted by u/buddhiajuke
sequoia · 5 years ago
As a US voter I am very frustrated With and tired of this obsession with election forecasting. Is it going to influence whether or not you go out and vote? If not, what is the point of it?

What value does something like fivethirtyeight add to our democracy, if any? Is this motivation the same as that of diving deep into baseball stats or Star Wars starship engineering, just like “nerding out” for its own sake?

Contrast the voter who never looks at any of these polls with one who keeps up with them daily. Is the latter voter better off in some way? Is this just about trying to read the tea leaves so you can strut and preen later about having been correct, should the dice roll be in your favor?

My concern is that these things are distracting and may actually dissuade some people from voting because they think they “don’t have to.”

Here’s an idea: everyone go vote for whoever you think the best candidate is regardless of what a stack of polls say.

Someone set me straight here, what is the point of all this stuff.

gridlockd · 5 years ago
The point is that people want to know what's going to happen before it happens. If I believed a Democrat was sure to win, I would want to allocate my stock portfolio different than if a Republican were to win.

Also, you can make money betting on the outcome itself. If the odds you get are underpriced relative to an accurate forecast, that's a great bet to take.

Furthermore, these forecasts influence where politicians put their focus. Let's say you're Hillary in '16 and you think Wisconsin is yours despite the forecast showing a narrow lead, maybe you should reconsider.

u/gridlockd

KarmaCake day469March 12, 2019View Original