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Comment by nojito | Hacker News Reader

So you gambled and got lucky.

You really shouldn't assume that your story is the norm.

Agreed, putting all your eggs in one basket like this is just gambling. This person got lucky, but make no mistake anyone else reading this: IT IS STUPID AND YOU WILL PROBABLY LOSE. MOST DO.

If you want to do something with your $100K, use it as a house down-payment or consider mutual funds. Or just yeet it into GME, I'm not a financial advisor.

If you don't know what Williams %R is, can't fathom the concept of normalized average true range, have never studied corporate history in the automotive and computer industries, and have no idea of the effects of monetary policy, you might just be gambling. Fortune really does favor the curious :)

More realistically, he was just speaking casually. It’s highly unlikely anyone would be stupid enough to put everything into one stock.

No, I wasn't speaking casually. https://twitter.com/maxharris9/status/1370117445378265088

11.14% Bitcoin, 87.96% TSLA, 0.90% ARKG.

NB: this is not investment advice. What worked for me in the past may not work for you now. Do your own research.

"Luck" is a way of coping with the fact that someone else did the work required to choose wisely and you didn't. It is especially insidious because it ensures poverty in direct proportion to the extent you rely upon it to guide your actions.

What advice do you have for somebody who is yet to retire? Buy a stock which is about to boom?

If you don't have a lot of money to invest, it's far better to put that cash into developing yourself. That can be as simple as reading books such as The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen or The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, or following an interest you already have (mine are things like machining, chemistry, structural engineering, neon art).

If you have a business idea, one of the best books I've read is The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed by Alberto Savoia. Making stuff is a lot easier than learning whether or not you're on the right track without spending everything you have.

The last thing I'd suggest is to be concerned with history and America's oncoming fascist trainwreck. Peikoff wrote The Ominous Parallels forty years ago, and his words are every bit as chilling as they are prescient.

How does any of that relate to investing in Tesla?

Investing intelligently isn't a matter of luck. The ability to think very broadly and deeply helps a lot. Be curious! Read stuff! Don't blindly copy others.

Tesla in the last year has been a meme stock with valuation that has no connection to reality or any fundamentals. Is this what you predicted with your research?

That’s what you think. I disagree, obviously, which is why I haven’t sold any shares. Why don’t we come back to this in five years?

I am pretty sure I’ll still be rich, and you'll come up with more evasions to explain why you aren't.

> The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand

Oh yeah, buying into a cult whose entire appeal is convincing selfish people they can stop feeling bad about it, you're very very developed.

Also hysterical that this nose-to-the-grindstone approach is what you're advocating when you retired over a one time return from a super volatile stock.

Let's check back in five years ;)

I'm maxharris9 on Twitter

The luck part is that you could have made the same prediction about lots of different companies that didn’t increase as much as Tesla. I think it’s reasonable to take credit for predicting the direction of the stock, but 10xing your money in a single year is lucky.

It’s “wise” when it works but it’s gambling.

Nothing wrong with it but individuals shouldn’t assume that the only way to succeed is by gambling.

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