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0 pointsMelting_Harps5y ago0 comments

> Sure it does. I've seen lower middle class people become millionaires that way. Of course, one needs the discipline to not succumb to spending it on a car/house/divorce, and the intestinal fortitude to not panic sell when the market tanks.

I think he was referring to the adrenaline rush, not the potential to make life changing amounts of money playing the long game, which clearly doesn't yield the same 'rush' he was referring to but is none-the-less an effective strategy.

I'm an unabashed adrenaline junkie: I've been in martial arts, school sports, motorsports, I did regular public speaking engagements for my startup and in academic-based oratory before that, and spent time in high end Kitchens... but with that said, to this day I will never understand the mediocre adrenaline 'hit' you get from gambling. It's really low level stuff to me, like lower than lifting weights or running a mile, something I did regularly at the gym after getting beat up working an 11 hour shift of a busy Dinner service.

I used to play $10 buy-in tourneys of Texas-Hold'em (forced into is more like it) hosted in the living room next to my bedroom when I was in my late teens/early 20s in Motorsports and I often got so bored, even when I won, that I failed to stay in if it went longer than an hour and often asked to take a cut on my pot/payout and forfeit to just get some sleep as I had school and work in the morning.

By contrast my professional driver friends/roommates were up until 5am and one of them played online for high stakes, the other played the stock market on the side and said it felt like the same 'rush,' as a day at the track but I could never relate to either of them as a track day was way more intense for me.

Flash forward to my Bitcoin days and after the initiation you get from from a couple of years in that space with such absurd volatility and all that the drama that follows it is such that nothing really even compares to it anymore, and I wasn't even a day trader, I'm merely an early(ish) adopter so none of this makes any sense to me at all.

What I do know is that this was done for gamblers [1] after COVID and is slowly becoming the norm in legal states that have re-opened due to the demand these, quite frankly addicts, create for the Casino Industry.

I wonder if something like Neuralink could help mitigate these diseases, as it all seems to stem from a neurological/neurotransmitter stimulation/feedback loop. I'm less concerned with the Matrix-style downloading/AI integration and more focused on what it could do for people with severe Depression, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and ALS.

1: https://www.highstakesdb.com/10328-covid-19-friendly-blackja...

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WalterBright5y ago

I don't get a rush from gambling, because I know the math and know I am doomed to lose.

Stocks, on the other hand, have an upward bias. Of course, there could be events like losing a war where your portfolio will be vaporized, but in such cases you're going to lose anyway, so there's no point in worrying about such catastrophes.

abduhl5y ago

Alternatively, you don't get a rush from gambling because you have a lack of imagination on how you can beat "the math" and so have never gotten the rush from your plan working out (at least in your small sample size and from your perspective).

WalterBright5y ago

> you have a lack of imagination on how you can beat "the math"

I.e. I don't invest in ignorant fantasies.

I recall going to Lake Tahoe once. Buses would pull up to the casinos, disgorging mobs of silver-haired people rushing into the casinos to spend the day losing money.

It's sad.

orojackson5y ago

Or taking a different view that concurs with yours: investing in index funds or broad ETFs lets me match or beat most long-term investors with nearly zero effort. There's no need for me to waste my time reading "financial news" or developing super fancy HFT algorithms like some posters here have done. I just need to buy those index funds at my desired asset allocation and I'm good to go. Repeat until retirement. Very simple.

Granted, I do complicate things a little by insisting that I never sell anything I buy, not even for rebalancing, until retirement (otherwise I wouldn't be buying and holding in my eyes). However, I get around that by constantly rebalancing with new money [1].

Honestly, I find it rather jarring that as someone who usually frequents /r/personalfinance and Bogleheads, I see lots of investing suggestions on HN that do not involve indexing.

[1]: http://optimalrebalancing.tk/

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leetcrew5y ago

it's not like riding a motorcycle, but buying close-to-expiry options can be sort of like trading bitcoin back in the day. the addition of time pressure makes it a little more interesting. pretty fun when you see your contract jump from a total loss to a 600% gain on the day of expiry.

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WalterBright5y ago

I don't get a rush from gambling, because I know the math and know I am doomed to lose.

abduhl5y ago

WalterBright5y ago

> you have a lack of imagination on how you can beat "the math"

I.e. I don't invest in ignorant fantasies.

I recall going to Lake Tahoe once. Buses would pull up to the casinos, disgorging mobs of silver-haired people rushing into the casinos to spend the day losing money.

It's sad.

orojackson5y ago

Honestly, I find it rather jarring that as someone who usually frequents /r/personalfinance and Bogleheads, I see lots of investing suggestions on HN that do not involve indexing.

[1]: http://optimalrebalancing.tk/

1 more reply

leetcrew5y ago

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