this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
495 points (97.5% liked)

Technology

58970 readers
5096 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In gambling, the house always wins, by extracting value from the players. In stock trading, the players (capitalists) collectively always win, by extracting value from labor, technological growth, and natural resources. These are not the same picture.

Not all gambling requires a casino/house.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Even in a home poker game, it is not possible for all the players to go home having made a profit, whereas that is very possible in the stock market due to growth, labor, and natural resources.

(The coal miner who gets a wage and black lung is not a player in the stock market. Neither is the sun, which provides free energy to agribusiness.)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

Yes, general investing is not zero sum, however many methods of advanced trading are. Options trading, which is prominent and easy to access on Robinhood, is much closer to gambling (and is treated that way by many users) and is zero sum.

Most active trading strategies require successfully arbitraging, or extracting inefficiencies out of the market, and you can't do either of those things without someone else losing money.

Passive investment is investing in the companies that underlay the market, active trading is extracting value out of the market itself.