Hacker News Reader

Comment by mordymoop | Hacker News Reader

I won a similar contest by being the only student who never bothered to log into my trading account, thus keeping all my assets in cash by default. The market had a down week, so everybody except me was in the red.

I think the lesson, which has served me well, is to not make short-term trades.

View on HN

When I studied abroad, I lost my debit card and had to get it mailed to me internationally. I was down to nothing and spent a week living off of rice and furikake.

What saved me is one of these trading contests for my school's business club. I signed up for it and dumped all of my "money" into playboy and forgot about it. Turns out they won some big lawsuit and the stock spiked just in time. First place was a $200 dollar fine. I had to have the club president spot me the train ticket to go pick it up.

Just to be clear... It was a prize, not a fine right?

The lesson is that in a win/not win contest, you want to do something no one else is doing. Maybe things go your way or maybe they don't. But you avoid the risk of being narrowly beat.

3rd place in our class was a student who dropped out two days into the stock game and never logged in.

short term trade is gambling unless you really have data and speed that you know how to use. Most trader uses charts and whats hot, the profits then runs on the greater fool theory.

You can go long and sell if there is a significant breakout. Then you hunt down the next value stock. A return is a return.

If you got into Nvidia ten years ago you would have to be dumb not to pull it now. There is market timing foolery, and then there is just being realistic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com