HN Explorer

It seems like I keep missing out on life and opportunities

8 points by paulpauper ↗ HN
Everyone getting rich with crypto, with Game Stop, Tesla (and other option trades), with SPACS, in the tech industry, and so on. I wish I had paid more attention to some of these trends.

Not just financial opportunities, but it seems like there is great debate online about GameStop, the US economy, and other interesting topics, and I find myself on the outside looking in as passive consumer, rather than being a participant and contributor. There is so much going on and I feel like I am either late to the party or missing out.

19 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 53.0 ms ] thread
stphn2013
I feel the same. Someone told me about bitcoin in the early 2000s. I had some money, I could've bought some but I didn't. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
rvz
My rule is that if it is reported in the news to the point at which it becomes mainstream and the new normal, that ship has sailed.

There's eSports (and eSports companies) and it's just getting started. Still very early and not too late to invest, participate, compete or create a startup around it.

I'd put my money on that.

paulpauper
But hasn't e-sports been around for a long time, such as teens in Asia playing World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and other games competitively? When did this become a new thing? From what I understand, e-sports never caught on in the US like is has in China, Hong Kong, Korea, etc.
sergiotapia
esports has been around a very long time and peaked 5 years ago. faker, etc.

today where are the personalities? Where are the stars? Just faces on twitch

patatino
How are you gonna get exposed to that?
LandR
> Everyone getting rich with crypto, with Game Stop, Tesla (and other option trades), with SPACS, in the tech industry, and so on.

Not everyone, you only hear about the successful people really. I'm sure a load of people have lost money on Game Stop by timing it wrong etc.

I view these people as basically having won the lottery, great for them, but I'm not about to start playing the lottery.

paulpauper
Sorta, but I do not think the lottery comparison is completely accurate. The lottery is random and has a negative expected value intrinsic to playing. GameStop had already gone up a lot and was in the news even before it doubled on Monday. Same for Tesla. Both had ample opportunism for people to invest/speculate. It is more like, imagine a sequence of lotto tickets being drawn, and you observe that the numbers happen to follow a predictable pattern despite it otherwise assumed to be random. Surely, it would not be unreasonable to assume the pattern would continue, and if did continue, you would probably regret not buying anyway despite otherwise being conditioned to believe that it is random. Do you trust your eyes or your preconceived beliefs? If you see a dollar on the sidewalk (or in the case of GameStop, a Zero Halliburton suitcase full of $100s from call options) and you tell yourself that this is economically impossible, and as you are pondering this, someone snaps up the dollar, you would probably feel miffed.
coldtea
>Sorta, but I do not think the lottery comparison is completely accurate. The lottery is random and has a negative expected value intrinsic to playing. GameStop had already gone up a lot and was in the news even before it doubled on Monday. Same for Tesla. Both had ample opportunism for people to invest/speculate.

And in 100 days they might halve or go much less. That's the speculation part. But you don't take into account all the other cases where they didn't double, but instead gotten much worse...

LandR
Exactly, wall street bets is awash with people who have lost a small fortune gambling on their meme stocks.

You're just focusing on the very lucky few.

coldtea
>Everyone getting rich with crypto, with Game Stop, Tesla (and other option trades), with SPACS, in the tech industry, and so on.

"Everyone getting rich"? What new bubble are you living on?

Tens of millions were added to the permanent unemployed lines, hundreds of thousands of small businesses are in the brink of bankrupty, and regular working/middle class joes have badded than ever in the last 10 years (which are a pretty low bar themselves, compared to pre-70s).

paulpauper
wallstreetbets is a huge sub with a lot of people making money. There are so many headlines about GameStop and how much money options traders have made. There are a lot of unemployed people, but the unemployed have always existed and they tend to be less visible. I get what you are saying, but it is hard to see it in this perspective.
coldtea
If there are 350M US citizens, and 100.000 are "striking it rich" within 3-4 years, that's still 0.0003% chance of "striking it rich". 1 in 3500.

If, now, you're on some social hub with 1000 of them discussing, it would seem like "everybody" there has made it.

But they're far from everybody (not even close), and your chances overall are still 1/3500.

And that's just assuming everyone randomnly strikes it rich. That is, not taking into account all other factors that come into play, like not merely "being alive in the US", but having the right connections, having money to invest to begin with, etc that many of those people had.

If you don't have those prerequisites, you're even less likely than 1 in 3500 to "strike it rich".

perl4ever
It's a casino, and there's almost no barrier to entry any more. No commissions, minimum account size, or requirement to buy whole shares of stock. I think plenty of people are just like, ok, I got $10, $100, my stimulus check, whatever, I'm going to gamble it on something with Robinhood. They don't have capital that they worry about losing, they treat it like the lottery or slot machines. Economic hardship encourages this, not prevents it.

I suspect you're in an "old person" bubble where you see the stock market very differently from the mob on reddit.

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AnimalMuppet
You mention two things.

1. Missing out on getting rich. Well, more money is nice, but focusing on chasing money can make you miss life. Don't do that.

2. Missing out on the discussion. You fix that by asking questions. At first, they may be dumb questions. But if you don't know something but wish you did, don't just sit there. It's easier to learn than it ever has been.

Moody_10001
Not everyone and it's not too late. You still have time to do it.
patatino
Most people lose money with crypto, not making it. Why? Because they don't buy and sell weeks/months later, they gamble on leveraged trades. And all the winners you see, they don't show their losses.

Slow and steady wins the game. Try to see opportunities in the future when they occur and try to catch some of them. You will miss most, which is fine, everybody does.

fiftyacorn
Your missing the wsb posts where people lose lots of money. It's just gone mad on GameStop at the moment
murm
I think it's useful to maintain a discipline of mental hygiene and to isolate yourself from the constant flood of news, good and bad. If you get too focused on the success stories you'll be constantly worrying about whether you're missing out on something good, which impedes your ability to actually get anything done exceptionally because you're doubting your own thing and your own place in the world all the time. In the wise words of Charlie Munger: "Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy."