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Comment by yup00 | Hacker News Reader

Financial markets are not coupled to real economics anymore.

They’re coupled to speculative gamesmanship. Whoever can generate statistics to captivate the masses who do not understand them, via press releases, and media blitzes.

That sounds cynical, but I “hob nob” with people invited to Davos, and run depts at Ivy League schools.

Behind closed doors these are the conversations I’ve been privy too. How to captivate the “market” which is a euphemism created years ago to replace the religious concept of “flock”.

Mirror neurons really challenge the correctness of any wisdom to come from business leaders. It’s a pantomime, ingratiate ourselves before the socially rich

People see taxation as theft of property. I see it as reminding people there are no Gods or kings.

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I don't know about mirror neurons personally, but the cult-like behaviour, evangelism, and buzz words in business has been easily observable for decades.

Now you go into subreddits like /r/superstonk, bitcoin, GME, Dogecoin, etc. And the cultish religiosity is palpable in these echo chambers too.

So I'm not really surprised by this, if what you've shared is true.

You're mostly right but I don't see anything going on in the markets today as much different than how it has fundamentally operated over the past century or so.

Hell, much of the same "speculative gamesmanship" was going on in the tech bubble of the late 90s. Just completely irrational valuations detached from reality. We ended up in a big correction.

As Benjamin Graham said several decades ago and Warren Buffett Repeats constantly "over the short-term the market is a voting machine, over the long-term it's a weighing machine"

I'm usually a very negative person but another side of the coin here is that if you were good at this "speculative generation of statics to captivate" the best way to raise money was "gaming" big capital. With the risk profile of retail investors changing and more risky ways to trade on public markets becoming accepted comes a positive aspect of the naturalization of highly speculative single picks on the stock market, it's easier for more people to raise a lot of money for risky endeavors.

If it's going to be good or bad for society I don't know.

I personally have most of my money on low risk stuff, and when volatility spikes I sometimes sell options in the morning before starting my day.

The problem is that one of the incentives to do hard things under capitalism is wealth, and if things get too scammy you can get wealthy without actually building the thing. So while it is remarkably easy to raise capital right now, you also need a set of people who have clear positive intentions and want to build things raising that money.

It sounds like your cult is Theta Gang then! Seriously though that seems to be what the quiet crowd is doing - taking advantage of the premiums caused by the general crazy that permeates the market. I don’t know enough to sell options but I keep meaning to read up.

When your RSU and ESPP vest, open your brokerage and try selling a single 20-30% out of the money call that expires in a month.

You can read about it, but actually doing it is not that hard. Although, given the inflated stock prices and US equity options being 100 sized lot - you do have to keep an eye to roll it out if market is getting really exuberant.

Warning that a lot of companies have a trading policy that forbids employees from investing in options or any kind of derivative on their own stock. You might be allowed to make options trades on other companies in the sector (not legal advice).

I've only ever heard of this in the financial sector (even then, they can create trading plans for trades in future).

But yeah sure, I am not a lawyer or a fiduciary and this is not legal or fiduciary financial advise.

My last few big tech employers have had a policy forbidding me from trading in options or derivatives on the stock, as a lowly software engineer.

Care to share? From my knowledge, Google and Microsoft have no such restrictions.

You are forbidden to trade derivatives of GOOG as an employee of Alphabet. Source is that I am one and I have read my insider trading policy.

Granted the internal policy might be more detailed but I've read https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

It talks about not allowing "hedging Google stock".

To me it means "you can't short Google stock", which is reasonable. It would be really fishy for an employee to bet on failure of the company he works for.

It doesn't mean "you can't buy call options on Google stock", which would be unreasonable.

Here’s the quote from the document you linked:

> You should familiarize yourself with Google’s Insider Trading Policy. It describes company-wide policies that address the risks of insider trading, such as a prohibition on any Google employee hedging Google stock; and periodic blackout windows when no Google employee may trade Google stock.

The quotes gives hedging as an example of prohibited conduct and recommends reading the internal policy. The parent comment is from someone who read the internal policy. What more do you want, the internal policy to be leaked in full?

Employees of tech companies with a somewhat open culture can often make inferences about the company’s performance before financials are released. The SEC investigates when people make suspicious gains from options trades. Companies don’t want that kind of attention. Rather than try to define the exact parameters of what kind of trade is risky, it’s easier to just ban them as a rule. This may seem unreasonable to some, but it appears to be a common practice.

Check out TastyTrade for a plethora of free education on options in general, but especially selling options.

> it's easier for more people to raise a lot of money for risky endeavors.

Is it easier to raise money for risky endeavors or for "hot" endeavors. I'm not sure this no structure to how a lot of people are now allocating capital is actually contributing anything positive, just pure malinvestment.

AMC is a perfect example. It's a company that raised hundreds of millions at valuations 10x of what it had months ago. Is AMC a "risky investment" we should be allocating capital too? Box office receipts and still down 50% and may never fully recover. Why is AMC a good use of that capital rather than institutions that can replace it completely?

Anymore? Keynes said this in 1936.

Marketing matters a lot, and NKLA was quite popular or even infamous there. A known brand does have value, even according to 'real economics'.

Most investors seem to have been valuing that aspect and completely discounting the engineering/tech.

It helps me to think in terms of particles and waves.

A person is a particle and their influence is a wave.

I’m not so sure light is both, but our cognition enables seeing it as both.

Mirror neurons fire when we engage a behavior or see it performed.

Our culture is built upon a meme repeating protectionist like chants for the rich, deflation for the middle class, and stagnation of the poor.

Repeat, fire mirror neurons.

It’s not perfect mind control though cause once you know how the sausage is made, why give that particle (rich person) reverence?

People choose to exchange money for goods and services that improve their life. Rich people generally became rich by directly or indirectly providing goods and services that improved the lives of a great many people.

Rich people generally became rich by inheriting lots of money.

https://ips-dc.org/the_self-made_hallucination_of_americas_r...

Providing for one's children can be a powerful motivator. How long does that generational wealth last on avg?

I don't have it at hand, but in finding that other page I came across something saying, I think, 3-5 generations. It's googlable.

That seems somewhat reasonable. Work hard, do exceptionally well, and you can benefit your grandchildren but not very far beyond that.

Yeah it is all bullshit all the time these days. Spoken as an "elightened" but not Illuminated one. This is not a left vs. right issue. It is a 99.9% vs 0.1% issue. Sadly most of the 99.9% actually deserve what's coming in the future struggle for resources because they would rather accept what is fed to them and be led like lambs to where ever than actually think critically about the world. Most of those that "get it" are not interested in helping the masses and the masses don't want to be helped anyway. Next couple decades may be interesting times.

What is the time reference for "anymore"?

Was the 1920's stock bubble and 1929 crash just following fundamentals the whole time?

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