Facebook Shows There's a Sucker Born Every Minute | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Shows There's a Sucker Born Every Minute

online.wsj.com

101 pointsbond59 comments

I spent three years at one of the world's largest hedge funds. I was a banker for a year before that. Most important lesson I learned: Don't play individual stocks and think you have anything more than a gambler's chance of success.

There's a public perception that stocks as an asset are simple to understand - good company=stock goes up! - that is hugely far from the truth. Equity is a complex instrument. The factors influencing the movement of equities are complex.

For the retail investor, the best move is a balanced mixed of assets designed to capture long term market beta - effectively the tendency of asset classes to gain value over time. That's not so easy either, but if you gamble, it's better to gamble on a cornerstone of capitalism as a whole rather than an individual company.

Did your hedge fund outperform an S&P 500 index fund during the long run? Investing in stocks does not have to be complex.

There's a great infographic that pits human lifespans against this old idea - that investing in the stock market is always a good idea because it goes up in the long run. There were many, many times in the last 100 years where "the long run" was longer than a normal human lifespan.

It's really important not to think of this as just "invest in the stock market." It's "invest in assets with positive expected return." That means you need to diversify across asset classes, and that doesn't mean domestic and foreign stocks.

Also, re: stock market - most people's perception is based on the last 30. That happens to be the longest sustained bull market in history.

Including two crashes.

The more I learn about markets the more comfortable I am with my decision to primarily invest in index tracking ETFs (e.g. SPY). If I want to 'gamble', i'll do something more elaborate like short volatility, but 90% of my capital is deployed following the market's movement, not trying to beat it.

The biggest mistake I see is "The price is plummeting! It's a frickin' bargian!" Have actively tried to stop people investing on that or a similar premise without any luck.

Glad I didn't think that when I bought AAPL at $14 in 2001.

For any risky strategy, you'll find people who used it and succeeded. That doesn't make the strategy non-risky, nor necessarily wise.

That's called being results orientated. Just because it worked doesn't mean it was a good decision.

This article is dead on!

The warning signs were there; ballooning shares offered, late uptick in IPO price, companies saying facebook advertising sucks, etc.

People got suckered and are crying foul. Welcome to the stock market. Suck it up, learn from your failures.

"Investing" is stock market is a gamble: the easiest way to learn that it is casino is by experience (invest and learn).

The problem is that the new generation will not listen suggestions of people which already learn things the hard-way - so there will be always fresh influx of suckers which think these 'old' people don't get it.

However, this does not mean that investment in stock market is a bad idea - but you need to consider it as 'poker': money management is very very important, learn to cut loses fast, you need to hedge (especially for unforeseeable events while market is closed), don't bet blind, etc.

All Facebook has to do is tie the advertising platform to having a business page on Facebook to force businesses to spend something on ads. Individuals should be able to use Facebook free but not businesses. Once that happens the stock will go way up.

They already do this. http://allfacebook.com/promote-your-page-button_b89788

You know who made out well on the FB IPO? People who sold in secondary markets pre-IPO on the hyped pricing.

I am all for justice but this type of behaviour happens all the time. It has just made the front page news because of retail investors discovering shares go down (as well as up). I know this message will get down voted but the financial markets are a fickle place. Sorry.

I work for a financial-services company and I still think investing in the stock market is crazy. There are people who spend their days figuring out how to separate "investors" (basically, gamblers) from their money either without getting caught or in a legal-but-underhanded manner. I know I'm stupid enough to have my money taken from me without understanding how, but I'm not stupid enough to actually subject myself to that.

"Investing in the stock market is crazy" ?

http://www.mymoneyblog.com/impact-of-inflation-on-stocks-bon...

Real Returns from various asset classes: Stocks: 6.9% Bonds: 2.3% Bills 1.0% Gold 2.4% Housing 1.5%

Stocks crazy? Looks to me like the rational thing to invest in.

Every time I've made numbers equities have underperformed gold and housing long term, esp. when considering commissions and tax. One would normally look for 20-30 years max. returns, as 100+ year periods will include one-off historical events that will change the picture completely. Case in point, the hindsight bias is strong on this one, because it's fact that these countries were chosen because they are the "winners" in recent history. What about the "losers"? you don't know where your country will stand in 110 years time.

I also work in the finance industry and I agree that Joe Doe outsider shouldn't gamble a significant chunk of his net worth in the stock market. Gambling being the key word here.

Speculation is a euphemism for gambling.

Those people who push equities generally are brokers (and thus get a cut of your transactions) or shareholders (who need people to buy their stocks). Unfortunately the capital formation goals have fell by the wayside.

http://allfinancialmatters.com/2011/02/15/gold-vs-sp-500-ind...

Shows the S&P 500 clearly outperforming gold from 1973 to 2010. Of course, there were massive fluctuations; what this says to me is to be diversified (and diversification includes stocks).

Stocks pay tax and commission.

This is never shown in these fancy charts, but any investor will see his bottom line affected by these costs.

Also, companies can be ejected out of S&P and replaced by more successful companies. These events are also routinely hidden from graphs.

Huh? Any investment is going to incur capital gains taxes when sold. Commissions are trivial for large stock purchases and certainly are very low compared to say gold or property.

If a company is ejected from the S&P 500, tracking funds tend to eject it as well. Also these charts tend to not be dividend adjusted, further increasing the benefit of stocks. Check out SPY; it actually has out-performed the S&P 500 (I believe due to dividends and what not).

Physical gold purchases don't need to be declared in many places. Which means 0 tax, plus the fact that the government doesn't know you even have it, were they to introduce any kind of legislation.

These charts usually include dividends. When they don't they are very crappy. In many international stocks dividend is too substantial to be possibly missed.

Unless I'm really stupid, this only works if you happened to buy in 1973.

You see the big downward trends in the stocks in 1998 and 2007?

Now pretend you invested in 1997 or 2006 instead of 1973. All of a sudden the graph would be transformed to show Gold as the clear winner. The guy's clearly an amateur, even as someone who has no interest in stocks whatsoever, never take advice from someone like this.

If you invest at the wrong time you lose money. The problem with graphs like this demonstrating the 'long-term' is that people conveniently pick a year that works for their point. The other common one is that people always pick just after the great depression to demonstrate stock market growth over time.

the same can be said of gold. if you pick gold anytime from 70-95 it loses out on stocks. Also, I don't see the big downward trend in 98, as we didn't peak until 2000 ;-)

The real takeaway is to not try and time the market. don't just buy all at once. if you continually invest over time you will have much less volatile returns, and continually investing over almost any period the stock market has higher returns than the other asset classes mentioned.

I use to feel that way as well. Thing is - everything is a gamble. Holding your money in the US Dollar is a gamble in the dollar. How can you hold (and ideally grow) wealth without exposing it to risk?

Could you cite some numbers?

I'm dubious as everything I've seen shows equities winning over almost any 20-30 year period. And by equities I mean a minimal load index fund. It's well known housing pretty much follows inflation (http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/case...).

On the surface, it would seem bizarre if housing could beat stocks long-term. I can't speak much for gold.

1. housing: People have to afford their houses. As long as land is not scarce, this is just going to follow (housing-part) inflation. The reasonable maximum (across the US) is median income growth.

2. Stocks: As a first (0th?) order approximation, some weighted average of US and world-wide nominal GDP growth. Should easily beat #1.

3. Gold: Pretty complicated to track. Demand will rise as world incomes go up. But suppliers respond and pump more gold out. In theory, this makes gold more expensive but advances in technology can make production cheaper. As a naive investor though, I see no reason to invest in gold as I know little about the supply-side.

Gold is what it is. It's a commodity. It's pretty much moved with the CPI except in the last few years. You can make money if you can correctly speculate short term trends, long term it tends to be an inflation hedge at best.

Exactly. It's something with objective value.

Unlike your average stock, which depends on many variables. You can do better or worse, but if you have no idea about these variables it's perfectly wise to stay away.

Value is always subjective. I don't care for gold. I'd rather have water.

> It's well known housing pretty much follows inflation

I'm curious why you claim that while providing a reference that clearly contradicts you: a reference house cost $100k in 1890, went down to under 70k in the 1920s and then up to over 200k a few years ago. Note that this is already corrected for inflation.

Note how trivial these changes are in the long term. 1890 to 1920 = ~1% real decrease a year. 1920 to peak in 2006: ~1% real increase a year

Overall, it tends to bounce back to ~110 year over year, implying the long-term real price increase is 0.

There's an excellent book Safe As Houses that basically shows that over the long term real estate fails to keep up with even GDP growth [1].

[1] http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/allister-heath/why-b...

My guess is that he's talking about direct investments in particular stocks.

I'm another person who worked for financial traders. I would never buy individual stocks. All my money is in low-load funds (e.g., index funds). I'll probably buy some income property soon. But I know exactly who is on the other side of stock market trades, and I know how hard it is to beat them.

A friend of mine prefers the word "bet" or "gamble" to "invest" when it comes to stock markets.

Sure, as much as in horse tracks, knowing more increases your odds of winning, but, overall, it's a sport better left for the professionals.

That doesn't preclude you from playing, of course. I do and it's very entertaining. I just won't bet everything on stocks.

I still look back to the old old days when stocks actually meant you owned a part of the company and could expect to turn your stock back in for a payout from that company in the future. Those are stocks that make sense to me.

Nowadays you're literally buying into the opinion of a company. Sure we use things like P/E and future growth to form that opinion, but in the end it's a lot like Bitcoin, it has value because people believe it has value, many of these stocks have no hard requirements that peg their value. You as a stock holder aren't entitled to any of Facebooks profits, and voting rights are worthless.

I've been having a lot of conversations around intrinsic value of stocks that echoed this a bit: dividends or voting rights. If this were the case though, I don't think you would see the levels of investment that you're seeing. Facebook's stock's intrinsic value is derived from Mark Zuckerberg's value of it. In other words, even though you cannot exercise those rights to any effect, if everyone concluded they were worthless, you'd see Zuckerberg buying them up b/c he values them or he would address the reasons people consider them worthless thus adding value.

The absurd part of this that this would imply FB stock is intrinsically worth less, which makes the current already over-valued trading price look that much more ridiculous!

Actually currency is the same thing. The dollar has value because we all agree it has value. It's not based on gold any longer (though one could argue it's based on oil). It's based on a host of indices that we, as a group set. And those indices are traded and have a set value. Decided by the buyer (us) and seller (us).

I'm not complaining. I'm just pointing out that all of our economy is based on the same principe/model; as long as the vast majority of the group (us) believe the dollar is worth something, it will be.

Anyone who invested in FB at any time (and that includes the big boys) believed that FB was a good investment. In other words, they believed the hype and didn't understand the business. Until someone who they trusted came along and told them to bail. And here we are.

I actively trade. All the time. But FB I didn't touch. I asked myself, at ANY time have I ever clicked an ad on FB? The answer: "No". That meant FB is vapor. People are betting that people (all of us - including the people making the bets) might, sometime in the future click on ads. Or that FB might come up with something. Something. (And I bet it's gonna be selling out personal data - what we browse, like, etc, etc. It's the only real value FB has).

Do you ever click on google AdSense ads? I never click on any ads personally. I don't look at that as an indication that others don't though. FB ads raise awareness for me. In particular, ads for movies make me realize that the movie is out and I'll go see it - but I won't click on the link.

I would love hear the crazy on how the USD is based on oil.

Oh that's an easy one. But it's better to say our economy is based on oil: oil is exclusively traded in dollars.

That gives us a huge advantage over everyone else. And it's also the reason we can carry so much debt. As oil is traded in dollars, we will always be the safest currency to buy. Since oil, right now, is the worlds most valuable commodity.

I mean look around you. Oil is everywhere; pastics, food, drugs, cars, power - everywhere.

I understand that we could get very abstract about the concept of value, but what I meant to say is that many stocks have no guarantee behind them. If I buy a big mac, there's a pretty good guarantee that I can eat it, oil I can burn, a movie I can watch, virtual swords I can play a game better with. Value comes from how important these guarantees are to the buyer and seller.

Like FB, many stocks have meaningless voting rights, there's no buyback requirement, and you have no rights to company assets or earnings. You're guaranteed nothing when purchasing them, and so value comes entirely from opinion.

There's a faith that eventually there will be a dividend payout or buyback, like Cook at Apple finally did. But most companies ride the rollercoaster until they crash.

Currency is a bit different from equity. Currency is a medium of exchange designed to smooth the trade of actually valuable things, not a store of value itself. A company is a (dynamic) store of value, that is supposed to generate valuable product at a rate proportional to its price.

I started out my working life as a financial analyst in an investment bank, and that experience led me to the same conclusion. I really believe the only people that should own equity in a company (public or private) are the people that actually know the business of that company (like top 10 customers, top expense line items, name of the major sales people etc.). The mindset of the casual investor is the same as the casual gambler (i'm saying this from personal experience). Financial services is a zero-sum, no value-added operation, it's a wealth redistribution exercise, nothing new gets created; the only way it can grow is by feeding it outside money/assets; there's a real incentive to find suckers.

My time on Wall Street has actually made me quite averse to the whole broad shareholding/democratised finance movement. The fact that 90% of finance related posts' comments on HackerNews, a top quartile intelligence population, make me cringe tells me we should restrict market access to institutions and accredited (read: very liquid) investors.

Yea! Because people are stoopid! Stoopid people shouldn't vote!

All these suckers invested in Facebook, prices fell, and now they're bitching about how there was inside information that they didn't know about, that would have prevented them from investing in the first place. Tough shit. That's life, and this sort of thing will happen. What's NOT ok is to sue (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/23/us-nasdaq-facebook...) over the loss of money, due to you investing in a business you don't know anything about.

I just can't understand why this is okay. My brain hurts.

I don't understand many shareholder lawsuits. Especially when the lawsuits are robo-generated, eg once a stock's value crosses a threshold. It seems like unnecessary, unproductive overhead. Like anyone is guaranteed a profit.

As for Facebook, I'm ambivalent. Kinda like the housing bubble. Everyone with have a twit knew that prices were inflated. Most all the players were bad actors. And the people who choose to gamble, well, tough noogies.

But what I do get worked up about is fraud. If Facebook lied, like the mortgage brokers, lenders, foreclosure goons, etc, as in made false statements in their filings, equivalent to committing purjury, then throw that book at them. That's contract law. There's no way for an open market to function well if the players are allowed to lie about legal statements.

(Not that I think Facebook lied. Nor do I care; I'm not an investor. I'm just kinda amused that so many people were fleeced.)

(My snarky response about voters being stoopid is more about the undemocratic impulses of libertarian fruitcakes. People given high quality information make high quality decisions. The remedy for bad decisions is education and patience, not yanking people's rights.)

I write portfolio management software and decision support systems (about 25% of my time) and I have the same opinion.

It's a fool's game betting on what is effectively a publicity ranking.

If you want to do something crazy with a real return, invest in metals futures as they have real industrial uses (i.e. any catalysts/alkalis i.e. platinum, silver, lithium and copper as it's scarce).

If it's not NEEDED, don't invest in it.

>I still think investing in the stock market is crazy.

this is a kinda extreme fringe position. I mean, I feel the same way, and all my money is invested in my own company, but I'm generally seen as way higher risk than just dumping your money in a index fund.

Out of curiosity, where do you invest your money?

Somewhat revisionist it seems from the WSJ, I can't recall any point in the lead up to IPO that they published anything that alluded to problems on the near horizon.

Facebook's mobile problem was widely published before the IPO. Do a Google News search on "Facebook mobile" and you'll find stories from two weeks ago where Facebook admitted that they don't know how to monetise mobile on their S-1 filing.

http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/00011931251203451...

Risks Related to Our Business and Industry:

In 2009, 2010, and 2011, advertising accounted for 98%, 95%, and 85%, respectively, of our revenue.

...

increased user access to and engagement with Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently directly generate meaningful revenue, particularly to the extent that mobile engagement is substituted for engagement with Facebook on personal computers where we monetize usage by displaying ads and other commercial content;

...

Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently display ads, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results.

I think he means that specifically WSJ didn't publish anything about it.

Um. The same columnist wrote on Thursday before the IPO "Here Are 10 Reasons Not to Buy Facebook Before You Buy It Anyway"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230387960457740...

Right and that was his opinion. Obviously in any decision (investment or otherwise) there are going to be people on both sides of the issue.

The problem is knowing whether to believe them or not.

(Like Wanamaker said about advertising, something like "I know 50% of my ads work but I don't know which 50%")

Of course it was his opinion.. what else could it be?

The point is that this columnist is not being revisionist.

I'm saying that the fact that the WSJ published something which was negative to the stock (by the same author) in advance is not conclusive in helping you make a decision. You can read pieces that are pro and con to a particular product, service, stock all the time (remember the publicity surrounding iphone as one example). You can always go back and say "see here is what I said I was right". The question is how many things has someone said (or a newspaper) and what percentage turned out correct. My point is it was great that there was that info saying "stay away" in advance. But there have also been those writings that have turned out wrong.

I don't think this is done anymore but stock brokers used to call prospects with hot stock tips saying "not asking you to buy this today". Not everyone got the same tip of course. They would then call back weeks later but only call the people who they had told about a stock that increased saying "see I was right, now buy this stock from me now". (A variation was in "Boiler Room" I believe).

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