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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to hear about your inheritance going up in smoke, my man

The article says the parents limit this high-risk stock picking to 10-15% of their portfolio.

Edit: Excerpt:

>> My mom assured me that she’s started reading up on stock valuation, and only buys 20 or 30 shares at a time. She gauges that 15% to 20% of her wealth is in day trading, leaving the bulk of it in her tried-and-true index and retirement funds.

>>My dad, having gotten into the game later, has only about 10% of his money in short-term trades. In the unlikely case that he loses it all, which he doubts would happen, it wouldn’t be financially devastating.

Edit 2: And yes, in fairness, since they're just "gauging" it and might not keep rigorous track of the actual values, it could be a huge underestimate. But still, not "goodbye inheritance".

I guess I'm of the occasionally unpopular opinion that the gap between "high-risk stock picking" and gambling is nil. We can then replace that back into the headline and get "my parents have started gambling 10-15% of their net worth", and I feel that is destined to end poorly, especially when they try and recoup the inevitable upcoming losses.

Oh, no argument there, I was just speaking to the claim that the inheritance is gone.

There is a huge difference between trading binary options or spread betting and holding a portfolio of FAANGS stocks. It’s very unlikely that you will lose 100% of your money if you’re holding more than 1 stock. Even ‘dead’ stocks like Boeing are pretty resilient on top of various bailouts and speculative hopes.

But day-trading isn't "holding a portfolio of FAANGS stocks." In bad times, it's buying TSLA at $400, then selling TSLA at $200 and buying AAPL at $100, then selling AAPL at $50 and buying INTC at $45, etc.

Gambling has a bad reputation for several reasons: its addictive quality encourages bad behavior, it takes place in unsavory places full of other vices, and the house edge means it's a reliable way to stochastically lose money.

The last two don't apply to playing the stock market, so we're left with it being addictive. A lot of drugs and behaviors are addictive, and in all cases there are users who are, nonetheless, not addicted.

So caution is still indicated, but the situation is not as pessimistic or as inevitable as you paint it to be.

In particular, losses are not inevitable. In a bull market, there will be more gains than losses, by definition, in a bear market, the opposite.

The market is more bull than bear, fairly consistently, due to a combination of inflation and economic growth. Past performance is not indicative of future results...

Don't assume the author is a man. The author of this article is Stephanie Yang.

As a non-native speaker, can one say: "My Woman"? Or what would you recommend?

The sentence works fine if it’s left off entirely.

My friend

Kiddo

m'lady

My woman doesn’t sound right to me as a native English speaker. You could go with some non-gendered alternatives such as my friend or kimosabe. I guess the question is what we’re you trying to convey here?

This is a good question.

I think English itself is lacking a bit here—ie: it’s very common to say “you guys”, semi-regardless of gender of the subjects, because we don’t have a 2nd person plural tense.

The original line was a joke-ish, so here are some options given that context.

“Ma,am” - very formal, often read as exaggeratedly polite. You’d be most likely to see this in a customer service context, hence the meme: “Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s” when people rant inappropriately.

“My dear” - gent(/i)le, but can be read as misogynistic or belittling if you’re a man, especially one of higher “status”. From a female and/or peer, reads more as motherly advice. Use with caution.

“Lady” - sort of splitting the difference. Formal, but more what you’d hear from a grumpy bus driver. Probably funniest option here.

“Girl”/“gurl” - slangy and youthful, more a loan word from the drag community. You’d probably get downvoted on HN for it and upvoted on Reddit.

“My dude” - more current jokey response, it’s been churned through Twitter and youth culture to the point where it’s meaningless enough that “dude” almost works for either gender. Probably don’t use this one, might even get downvoted on Reddit.

Edit: god, sorry this turned out long, but it’s a pretty fun exercise.

I'd say dude more than "almost" works for either gender - it's become totally gender-neutral.

I’ve had actual arguments over this. FWIW, I agree with you.

Yeah, my peer groups have been using dude as ungendered for over a decade at this point.

> because we don’t have a 2nd person plural tense.

Case, not tense, technically. "Tense" is for verbs.

English does have a variety of ways of indicating second person plural: "ya'll", "y'ins", "you all", and "you guys" are the most common. It's a shame English discarded "ye".

I like your alternate suggestions. In my family, we started using "bro" as gender neutral, at first ironically and now it's just stuck. I call my daughters "bro" all the time.

"my friend" is probably the closest to what you're intending In my experience it pops up way more commonly amongst non-native speakers so your mileage may vary if the objective is to sound native.

I assume it's a turn of phrase that's more common in some other languages?

chief

Being originally from the South in the US, I prefer "y'all", it's nicely gender neutral and while plural, I can overlook that and use it in the singular as well.

The problem is that if you use "y'all" in a Zoom meeting with a bunch of people from the Northeast, the conversation immediately becomes about how "oh you're from the SOUTH what's that like."

I don't know why this is downvoted tbh.

This is a very popular sentiment. I was interning at Tesla and went to a 'Women in Tech' thing, referred to one of my friends sitting next to me as 'A chick'. She took no offense but the whole panel roasted me brutally.

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