Hacker News Reader

Comment by tppiotrowski | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I wish it was as rewarding building or creating something as it is to invest in the stock market over the past decade. If you have capital it makes more sense to put it into stocks than opening a coffee shop or computer repair shop, etc. If the stock market stops paying out maybe we'll go back to trying to create value instead of profiting from value created by others.

View on HN

Depends on what you mean by "rewarding". I feel that building and creating is far more rewarding then clicking a button and watching a number go up. I hope others feel the same, because when everyone is clicking buttons and watching numbers, that's not something society can sustain.

I meant financially rewarding. It feels like the person that bought S&P500 stocks ten years ago probably fared better financially than the average entrepreneur.

If you built or created something that other people like (i.e. will pay for), you could probably get a way better 10 year ROI than you would in the market.

Doing that creating requires taking on sizable risk, a chunk of investment up front, and most importantly, a lot of hard work, consistently applied over multiple years. I know I have had conversations with myself about starting a business or building a rent house and the cost benefit calculus always comes back “invest in the stock market, 10% return for zero effort over the long haul.”

It’s getting over the initial hump of “would trying this be profitable, discounting for risk, effort, and opportunity cost?” That is the issue. Lower real returns in the market might change this.

It's getting more rewarding to put into Treasury Bills, when it's paying 4% in interest as of today.

That's a really good yield, so you're only losing 4.3% annually on a real basis.

stock market is a future indicator of economic activity, so if its down, it also an indicator that less coffee shops will be opened because of lack of capital

Reply on news.ycombinator.com