This is my big worry. I can get away and play about one day a week. Don't know what I will do when the day comes that I can't play at the last remaining casino within 2 hours of me.Originally Posted by VeryGood
Just looking at index numbers doesn't give you the complete picture. Stocks pay dividends. How much in dividends would you have earned on the Dow index from 1929 to 1953?
But sure, at long as you can get the hours in and play correctly, AP is a better bet.
I should have included the caveat that AP is a better bet until your bankroll grows to a point where your action is limited due to table limits, excessive heat, etc. I stand by my statement that someone willing to put in the hours has more of a sure thing in AP until the bankroll gets to 500k or so; which, granted, isn't all that much.
Investing in stocks, real-estate, or more exotic things has the benefit of near unlimited scalability, but you can't really quantify your edge, and you're relying on things that are largely beyond your control.
Your friend did well to be born at a time where he started investing in 1988 and likely caught much of the upside of the 90s. How well would he have done had he started in 1929, 1968, or march of 2000?
With 20/20 hindsight, getting into the market in march of 2009 seems like a no brainer, but had the mark to market accounting rules not been relaxed, and had the FED not initiated QE1,2,3.... the bottom could have been much lower.
With all that said, I'm not aware of any billionaires or even any hectomillionaires who made most of their fortune from AP; doesn't mean there aren't any, I'm just not aware of any.
There are thousands of hectomillionaires and billionaires who made most of their fortunes from investing, so clearly, beyond a certain point, that's the way to go.
Even Ed Thorpe realized this early on and went the hedge fund route.
He called the bottom of the recession nosedive way too early. Probably still paying for that.
Play within your bankroll, pick your games with care and learn everything you can about the game. The winning will come. It has to. It's in the cards. -- Bryce Carlson
Not only that but the largest portion of a hedge fund manager's income is taxed at the capital gains rate instead of ordinary income. That is why Warren Buffet's secretary is taxed at a higher rate than he is. It's ridiculous!
re: post by moses
Kudos to him.
Without violating any confidences, I will just say that moses
has fine data resources when it comes to certain sports.
Most do not.
His paucity of wagers is praiseworthy.
The "kiss of death" is seen when
someone feels that s/he needs to
bet all or most games.
During a week in NFL season I may find
2 to 4 underdogs and 1 to 2 favorite
that I judge to be worthwhile.
I would like to add two quick comments to the discussions, as it pertains to stocks.
(disclaimer, I know barely anything about technical analysis nor fundamental analysis)
First, I would think that the longer term you are looking the harder it is to forecast price movements. I'm not talking about knowing whether the price will be up or down in the next couple years, but actually knowing what the dips and rises of the graph will look like. Errors and unknowns compound overtime. However, from what I have read, technical analysis is really short term. By the time that (originally) unpredictable future comes up, you will have the information to make some kind of judgement.
Second, looking at how a particular stock/portfolio actually performed can be akin to justifying blackjack moves by how much you won. What, in my mind, is important isn't whether you place a bet on the stock market that wins, but whether you placed a good bet--that is a bet, that given the information you had, was worth putting money on/had positive expectation.
Well since this has morphed to a stock market tread, people kept talking about the performance of indexes. The dow index is kept artificially high. Poor performing stocks in the index are rotated out of the group and replaced by strong stocks. The index is like telling your portfolios performance by reporting whatever your best n stocks are doing without regard to what those stocks are from one report to another. The number is not quite meaningless but doesn't show what people tend to think it shows.
I hope you understand why they say these things. They are always trying to tell me my portfolio should be very different. I just do the mutual fund thing. 98% of the time I do what performs best. I remember my last move they said I was way over investing in that sector. I told them my only worry was I didn't invest enough. It has returned about 30-40% annually since then. In 10 years it has grown over 6 fold (including the crash). Most only doubled if that in that time along with some that tripled or a hair better. I was late to starting a nest egg. I must make up for lost time not be safe. I think I have done that through researched aggressive investing. I just have one dog that I have held onto because historically when things go to crap it will do exceedingly well. I have been thinking about dumping it but have not done so yet.
To the next poster(s),
if you are planning to post about the stock market, please start a separate thread.
In the past one member of the community has expressed some discontent with how muddied the topics can become in some threads. It would help topics and threads become easier to search.
Thanks
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