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Comment by virmundi | Hacker News Reader

While I realize the power of compound interest is real, those at 45 can get into commodities trading in IRAs. ETNs allow people to short or long a commodity. Paying attention to the tax forms helps reduce end of year non business related expenses. I personally prefer this for 25% allocation to high risk because these markets are more rational. You can tell why oil will go lower. You might not get it perfect, but you can ride both ways by listening to NPR. This can speed up the interest compounding because you can ride both sides.

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I've spent a decent chunk of time trading volatile assets, and this is really bad advice.

Sure, you can make money. Odds are, you won't, and if the information you have comes from NPR you almost certainly won't.

Wait, so what happens if I take what NPR is telling me is going to happen and act on the opposite? NPRbitrage?

For shorting oil over a month or two, it's fine. The market doesn't get much more information than what we have on the news. Oil tends to move with violence. That's covered in the news. Gas inventories and oil glut is covered too. You do have to dig a bit for rig counts. My larger point is that commodities seem to be much more intuitive. That's up there with "invest in what you know." Besides the advice said only allocate 25% to high risk.

Congratulations on getting lucky for a while but this is terrible advice. Sure everyone knows that violence impacts oil prices. But all the other oil traders have access to the same news that you do. There is no reason to expect that you can predict the future better than them more than 50% of the time.

But that applies to everything. The commodity markets are more reasonable. When trading an etn you don't have to take on the contract risk directly. You still have to worry about contango, but not the contract.

Did I predict the blowout in February? No. But I could tell it was going to keep going down. Right now it's a bit hard to guess given the doldrums. Still it's far easier to have a rational position that stocks on general.

No, all publicly traded markets are now equally "reasonable". Arbitrageurs have traded away all of the differences. Don't confuse luck with skill; anyone can get lucky for a while...

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