this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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isnt the market itself exactly that?
Long term market rate of return is positive (extremely positive of late), where as casino gambling is EV negative.
But options and futures exist as a short term hedge on equity investment. Combine that with the vig Robinhood takes on the front end in the form of higher contract prices, and you end up with an EV negative return - more consistent with high stakes gambling than equity investing.
The way I explain it is it's like a casino, where the market makers play and also take the rake/odds.
Stock trading is like playing blackjack, it's hard to win or lose money quickly. Options are like slot machines or roulette, you can win or lose very quickly. But at the end of the day the people who control the casino will come out ahead of you.
I class market trackers as investing rather than gambling.
Sure they can still go down (and by a lot), but it tends to be big events like COVID that do that, and it soon bounced back up again.
If you're investing more than a few percent of your portfolio in any one company, you're probably gambling though. And sure, nVidia look a safe bet today, but if Sam Altman comes out tomorrow and goes "sorry guys, this ain't going anywhere" then you'll lose over half your money before you can blink.
I wouldn't invest on a timeframe of less than a few years either. It's not for boosting your rent money. It's just better than leaving your spare money in cash. If the concept of "spare money" is alien, then it's probably not for you.
I read a forum post many years ago about people that put all their retirement money into some company that was going to be the sole supplier for some components for the iPhone. Apple didn't end up going with them, and the company was relying entirely on that contract. The company went bankrupt, and the people that invested lost all their money.
In the end, why invest in a small number of companies when you can invest in practically all of them? Bogleheads three fund portfolio (total US stock + total world stock + bonds) is very simple yet will beat most actively-managed portfolios over the long run.
This is right. But you don't really need the 'total world stock'. I reduced my allocation of that to 2% because it was dragging down my returns.
The point of including worldwide stock is to reduce risk in case the US has a recession, as not all other countries will be affected by that. The aim of the Bogleheads three-fund portfolio is to be reasonably balanced in terms of risk vs reward, which is why it includes bonds too. Past performance is not indicative of future performance, and in general it's better to diversify (investing entirely in a single country isn't really diversifying)
If you're not risk-averse then 100% US stock is fine, just be prepared for larger drops than if it was more diversified.