Ask HN: Is there any serious discussion about the stock market online? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there any serious discussion about the stock market online?

10 pointsFreeHugs18 comments

To me it often seems, HN is the only intelligent site on the net. At least for posts that get a lot of votes. Then usually some substantial comments get voted to the top and the nonsense tends to sink to the bottom.

I think a lot about the stock market and would love to read some discussion about company valuations. But I have found nothing so far. Neither on social media, nor on classic newspaper sites. All I found so far is cheap nonsense.

Is there anything out there worth reading?

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Personally, it think you allready understood most of what's happening: Its mostly nonsense. Its all "Future Bets" und "Future Expectations" that are all explained by "Experts" and plain lies from CEOs about actual value. As every toddler can tell you: Nobody can tell you the future.

Or do you want to grasp the "inner workings" like "Ratings" and stuff?

You can at least try discussing real valuations of various securities (aka fundamental analysis). Then, whenever current market insanity brings the price below the real valuation, you buy. Fundamental analysis looks like full time work though.

The great hedge fund manager John Maynard Keynes said "Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent."

No.

If I knew something about the stock market that was valuable and I told people for free i would destroy the value of that knowledge.

Thus 'those who know don't talk and those who talk don't know'.

This is math and you can't get around it. By definition somebody pontificating on the stock market is doing it for self-aggrandizement or to fool you to make bad trades.

If someone 'knows/sees' product X is over/under valued, he/she will act on it (buy or sell it) which will bend the price to that new value.

Now there are no absolute certainties, and the knowledge that come close to absolute certainty and aren't publicly known, are usually pretty illegal to share.

What's left it mostly speculation. Which is fine, that is how this all works.

You can definitely win money at the thoroughbred or harness racing track, not by picking "the best horse", but by waiting for a bet that is terrifically mispriced. Maybe once a day there is one that is so clear to me that I can do the math in my head, otherwise it's a game of running my model on my calculator, applying Kelly to decide bets, etc.

The "dollars get left on the floor" because the opportunity is limited there. At my local track I'd estimate that a bet more than about $50 would move the odds into a bad place for me. If I have a big bankroll I can't make Kelly bets anymore and my rate of return goes down. People who are good at this and serious about making money start their own sports books, trade derivatives, or something.

But unless you're investing other people's money, you are a small fish in the sea. Like, if all you have is 200k then none of your decisions being public would affect you in a negative way. Admittedly, I don't know much about the stock market but I can't imagine anyone caring if you want to short some company's stock.

Sometimes I like to play penny stocks and in some cases I bought $800 worth of shares and that wound up being 40% of the volume of that day.

(Don't laugh I sold half of the stake for $1200 a few months later. It has been up and down and I haven't looked at it for years but the other half is worth about $1500 right now)

It's true that you can't move AAPL that way but there are many things about trading that I didn't understand before I adopted a few penny stocks where I can see all the trades.

Do you manipulate the price higher and then hope people think it’s a trending stock? How often do you do this?

Move the stock higher, peddle it on /r/wsb, sell your position, buy up shorts?

This is an over-simplified view of the market. The market isn't a zero-sum game. It's often in an investor's best interests to publish their research on a position (after they have taken it) to convince others to jump in the trade with them. It doesn't do you any good to find a diamond in the rough if no one else knows about it.

It is a minefield though and you should never 100% trust one source on any given investment, but to act like there is some kind of mathematical truth that no one ever publishes any useful stock analysis is just silly.

> If I knew something about the stock market that was valuable and I told people for free i would destroy the value of that knowledge.

Not if you've taken your position and then encourage people to realise the same.

E.g. A more extreme example, but sometimes you see people up dirt on a company showing how they are fiddling numbers/debt etc, take a position and then publish.

Also realistically (more extreme examples aside) you telling the world what you know about a company wont change diddly, but just acts as a sounding board or because you like to announce/discuss it.

Telling people stuff for free doesn't mean they can utilize the information for free.

For instance, suppose someone said that many if not most people could be very successful investing if they just skimmed the description of each public company's business in the 10-K annual report, and chose a small number of the best ones only after reviewing all of the thousands out there.

That's way too much work for most people, but it's hardly impossible. It's not even a full time job.

But given it's not attractive to follow that procedure, telling people they should do it has no noticeable effect on its value, even if it works.

Not exactly stocks but for wide ranging topics in terms of Asset Allocation this forum is highly recommended: Bogleheads sub-forum Investing Theory, News and General : https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=10

Honestly, r/wallstreetbets has the most realistic information. You have to parse through a ton of bs. But theres some good market perspective if you look for it. Otherwise, I have found nothing, maybe r/investing or r/stockmarket, but those are naive.

Try r/thewallstreet not too bad either but better following me with options :)

If you are interested in valuations, /r/securityanalysis might be good subreddit. There are lot of different niche subreddits covering different aspects of stock market so look around.

No ignore any discussion and put all your money in an index fund

+1 there is a lot of good discussions on Bogleheads forum/wiki if you just want to invest in highly diversified funds: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php

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