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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Equities are investment vehicles. If you choose to trade them, that's your decision - but you will lose, on average. 95% of day traders lose money [1]. Zero-sum financial instruments like futures and options and cryptocurrencies are trading vehicles. These are not the same.

[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/stocks/day-trad...

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Both are trading vehicles and are treated the same by traders [1] similar to the VIX. Hedge funds, asset management companies and institutions spend their time and their clients money trading, not investing [2]. For groups like these, trading is where the money is.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13844765

[2] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/12/difference-inves...

The VIX is a synthetic index whose value is derived from the implied volatility of the S&P 500 index options (computed from the premium of around-the-money options on the SPX cash index a certain amount of time ahead), without fundamentals, tradeable only via futures contracts and ETFs that own those futures.

It's a second derivative tradeable only via third derivative.

This is very very zero-sum.

The overwhelming majority of these actively managed funds fail to beat the returns of the S&P 500. [1]

In fact over 15 years 92% of actively managed large-cap funds trail the returns of the S&P 500.

Stop trading.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/15/active-fund-managers-trail-t...

I hear that 95% figure all the time but I wonder if that applies to traders that have been trading as a full-time job for 5 years?

Well, 92% of actively managed funds underperform the S&P 500 on a 15 year trailing basis [1] so I'm going to say probably a lot.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/15/active-fund-managers-trail-t...

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