Comment by sameerds | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sameerds | Hacker News Reader

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From a retail investor's point of view, both approaches are wrong. The retail investor can neither "play" the game of stocks, nor understand what it means to buy a business. Not because there is anything magical about either, but because the retail investor has a life too, and would rather focus on their own work for their actual income.

The correct way to look at stock investment is to say "I bought a stake in the future of the world's industry". And that makes you realize what a mind-bogglingly large gamble this is with your savings. People simply have faith that human life will keep improving over the long term, and hence the value of the world's industry will also keep going up irrespective of short term rises and falls.

> that makes you realize what a mind-bogglingly large gamble this is with your savings.

Is it a gamble, really? I can't fathom what I could do with my money, should the world economy go to the gutter, big time. Holding cash surely won't help - cash can become worthless, did so many times in the past. Hard assets might help, but it's very tough to know which ones (cans of food maybe, but really? How much can you "invest" in it? And it's really just investing in the apocalypse... you're making a very shitty scenario slightly less shitty for yourself, _maybe_).

The thing is, all we can really do is hope that the future of the world's economy is good; if it isn't, there's really no rock-solid way to isolate yourself from the bad outcomes. Regardless how much you own now.

I'd argue that investing in skills and training is the best preparation for apocalypse scenarios.

I have a younger sister in medical school, and as I say to her about the debt she's taken on for the degree, "Even if there's a nuclear war and the economy and technology evaporate, people will want to keep you alive for your knowledge. They might break your ankles and chain you up to keep access to your knowledge and skills, but you'll be fed even when almost no one else is."

Not that preparing for an apocalypse is necessarily a great use of time - just saying that skills are a better asset for it than physical goods and resources.

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