[sdm]

Imagine what would happen if someone started a base jumping thread on here... Although I agree with Bradders re this seeming like an ok place for broader discussion of the pros/cons/risks too.

Problem with that is it would just turn into another debate thread, with any useful tips hidden among the show of intellectual masturbation by UKB's academic committee. None of which helps with the simple binary process of buying or selling based on research and price.

Market trends form an essential part of the research process and effect price.

As suggested.. For people to share info, ideas and experiences from the investing world.

I think it can all fit in one thread: individual stock picking ideas and research, passive funds, managed funds, commodities, bonds, forex, futures, crypto, long term investing, short term trading, fundamentals, TA, investment platforms, ISAs, pensions, micro trends, macro trends, taxation, regulatory changes and monetary policy, major events that impact markets etc etc.

It seems reasonable for some discussion of risk strategy to fit in with that. I think that can all fit in one thread but I'm OK with it splitting in to 2+ separate threads.

[Ru]

Including macro-risk based posts is sometimes useful, but not if they are generalised "investing is risky," "the world is over leveraged," "derivatives will wipe out everything" type stuff. Unless you can spot something coming over the horizon before anyone else panics (i.e. Covid, or being one of the handful of people that realised that mortgage bonds were mis-rated in 2005/6)   timing markets is pretty much impossible and the accepted thinking is that you will lose money trying to do so. Any one-off cataclysmic systemic failure would probably wipe out cash savings/pensions and other asset prices just as much as equities. Pointing out risks in specific stocks or groups of stocks is more useful though.

[petejh]

   100%.

IMO this thread will be most useful - for the small number of people actually interested in acting - by offering pointers to specific shares and research ideas regarding specific companies and sectors. 


Regarding discussing bonds, funds and pensions. Fair enough, but all I'd say is get a free subscription to the Telegraph or FT for a month and read their articles and comments. You'll learn more about those there than this thread will likely offer.

Managed funds are a good way to spend your money paying someone else to underperform the market.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/funds/post-pandemic-portfolio-ultimate-investments-250k-pot/

[andy popp]

I get that the investment thread jars with the political worldview of many of UKB's users.

Not at all in my case. I'm not interested so I don't read or post to it, but I don't mind one bit that it exists. Why should I? it doesn't impact me at all either way.

[tomtom]

I get that the investment thread jars with the political worldview of many of UKB's users.

Not at all in my case. I'm not interested so I don't read or post to it, but I don't mind one bit that it exists. Why should I? it doesn't impact me at all either way.

Me neither. What does make me bristle - is when I'm told what I can and cant post about... which is something I expect you also feel Pete.

[cheque]

Not at all in my case. I'm not interested so I don't read or post to it, but I don't mind one bit that it exists. Why should I? it doesn't impact me at all either way.

 

[petejh]

Me neither. What does make me bristle - is when I'm told what I can and cant post about... which is something I expect you also feel Pete.

Absolutely. But try to keep posts relevant to threads please. I don't post on many of the other threads despite often having an interest in the topic, mostly because I feel I haven't much new to offer, or I'm too busy for aimless idle chat. I gave up posting on many of the politics-based threads because they're largely an echo chamber that I have no interest in getting involved with.
Threads work best (imo) by the people posting being those who are active and enthusiastic about the subject. This thread would work best (imo) by those posting being those who actively partake in trading and investing or who want to. I don't imagine that's so many people.

[nik at work]

Wot Ru said.

We could probably have a bot post a “we’re all doomed, doomed I tell ya’” as every 16th post? Save anyone else having to do it...

Personally my preference would be two threads, one a broader discussion of the stock market/investing and this one as a fairly pure investment ideas/rationales thread. But I guess there is inevitable crossover of the two to an extent, and as I haven’t started the suggested other thread I guess the reality is I’m not that fussed if it’s one or two threads...

[sdm]

  100%.

IMO this thread will be most useful - for the small number of people actually interested in acting - by offering pointers to specific shares and research ideas regarding specific companies and sectors. 

Regarding discussing bonds, funds and pensions. Fair enough, but all I'd say is get a free subscription to the Telegraph or FT for a month and read their articles and comments. You'll learn more about those there than this thread will likely offer.

Managed funds are a good way to spend your money paying someone else to underperform the market.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/funds/post-pandemic-portfolio-ultimate-investments-250k-pot/

Fair points.

I would hope anyone was doing at least this much of their own research before acting on anything from this thread.

I think a little bit of discussion in here on those topics from the more experienced people can be useful for nudging people in the right direction for somewhere to start that research.

[andy popp]

intellectual masturbation by UKB's academic committee.

Where do I sign up?

[teestub]

intellectual masturbation by UKB's academic committee.

Where do I sign up?

It’s taking the bike courier carrying the artisanal vellum invitation longer than expected to get to Copenhagen.

[petejh]

intellectual masturbation by UKB's academic committee.

Where do I sign up?

Do you not get the memo, you're the chairperson  (chairperson being the best place to be...)

[andy popp]

you're the chairperson

I'd assumed that was a given.

[Offwidth]

It doesn't matter that investment usually leads to an average profit and old-fashioned gambling the opposite. The issue is people don't always judge risk very well and display addictive behaviours and when that is combined with the markets being gamed by the big players, under faulty regulation, the investment losers are not going away any time soon. Investment is just a form of gambling with better average odds.

[Oldmanmatt]

It doesn't matter that investment usually leads to an average profit and old-fashioned gambling the opposite. The issue is people don't always judge risk very well and display addictive behaviours and when that is combined with the markets being gamed by the big players, under faulty regulation, the investment losers are not going away any time soon. Investment is just a form of gambling with better average odds.

A lot of people enjoy gambling. In fact, the vast majority of gamblers are not in an unhealthy relationship with risk. Some are.

The vast majority of drivers, are reasonable and (roughly) follow the law and are relatively safe. Some drivers are total wankers.

Some people exhibit unhealthy or addictive behaviours and will find an outlet for that tendency. Should everything that carries risk be banned to protect those people from themselves?

PS:
Much of your “high risk, poorly regulated” description applies very aptly to most forms of climbing, outside.

[petejh]

Then simply don’t get involved in this thread Offwidth, it’s for investors. The people posting here don’t need you to save them.

[Bradders]

It doesn't matter that investment usually leads to an average profit and old-fashioned gambling the opposite. The issue is people don't always judge risk very well and display addictive behaviours and when that is combined with the markets being gamed by the big players, under faulty regulation, the investment losers are not going away any time soon. Investment is just a form of gambling with better average odds.

I don't agree with you at all on that, and I'm starting to see why Pete wanted to restrict the topic of conversation in this thread. I think you're confusing investing with the victims of investment based scams; describing people who've made a paper or actual loss on an investment, where it might appear at that point in time to have "gone wrong", as "victims" is nonsensical.

[Ru]

It doesn't matter that investment usually leads to an average profit and old-fashioned gambling the opposite. The issue is people don't always judge risk very well and display addictive behaviours and when that is combined with the markets being gamed by the big players, under faulty regulation, the investment losers are not going away any time soon. Investment is just a form of gambling with better average odds.

The difficulty I have with this, is that some sort investment with your money is probably going on whether you want it to or not, if you have any savings or a pension. What changes is how much of the reward/risk you walk away with vs someone else. If you have a pension invested on your behalf, someone is creaming off a large chunk of your money for the effort of investing, probably in a mundane way that's easy to replicate for yourself, without paying fees. If you hold cash with fixed income, someone is using that money, making a profit and paying you the least they can get away with. Cash loses money vs inflation. There are other options - paying down a mortgage is well worthwhile and I'd certainly recommend that as a priority for most people with spare cash.

[seankenny]

Maybe because there are so many serious victims of investments gone wrong that it's nothing like blatently evident. Maybe because, like all gambling, many people lose money they cant afford to, and sometimes end up behaving very unethically. If all investment was money people could always afford to lose and was responsibly placed I would have fewer concerns. Mo

This is all clearly true, until it isn’t, right? Surely if the value of an asset becomes decoupled from its underlying worth (however one might assess that), then buying and selling that asset becomes more like gambling and less like investing.

Discussing this sort of thing seems to me exactly what an investment thread should include. Alongside the tin mining tips, of course.

[mburke]

Kahneman is pretty well known for declaring that picking stocks is as much like rolling a dice than playing poker, I've not seen enough evidence that individuals can outperform consistently through time. I'm sure he also produced a paper that's cited in one of his books that showed the extremely low correlation of an investors performance year on year, suggesting that bonuses are paid primarily for luck not skill. Happy to be corrected.

This is of course different to having a diversified portfolio of shares and achieving an outcome similar to that of the market, which is obviously more sensible than just storing cash in a current account - but we aren't all so fortunate (me included) to have enough spare cash to be able to lock a substantial amount of it away in assets

[kac]

Some good posts. I thought I agreed with what habrich said but I also agree with Sean disagreeing! To my naive leftie mindset investing is where the expected gain is through the company increasing in value/profitability. This is of course good and its companies like this I think Pete wants to highlight. Gambling is where the expected gain comes from getting other peoples money. I may well be wrong and crypto is new assests rising up to their natural value where nearly everyone is a winner but I personally think the crypo gains will come from others losing and it is in effect a giant pyramid scheme. Why not just keep the investing thread for traditional investment recommendations and have a seperate crypto thread if people are interested in this?

[mburke]

There are always winners and losers, at risk of stating the obvious, for you to be able to buy something someone has to be willing to sell it - you obviously both have different expectations regarding the value of the underlying. Assets with a large amount of trading volume and volatility are often such because people disagree more widely about the expectations of future value.

While stocks will increase in value with economic growth/population/increase in the value of the underlying etc. - these things aren't static and the fundemental question everyone else asks is whether something is under or over priced at its current valuation, and that to a large extent is a guess because there is no empirical means by which to fully evaluate a firms fundemental value in pounds and pence

[sdm]

Kahneman is pretty well known for declaring that picking stocks is as much like rolling a dice than playing poker, I've not seen enough evidence that individuals can outperform consistently through time.

At the risk of going off on another tangent, poker is a very efficient game in the medium to long term for transferring money from lower skilled players to higher skilled players.

Perhaps it was a better example than he realised.

[mburke]

In the spirit of contributing something useful to the discussion in terms of practical guidance - the most robust strategy observed in the literature is some sort of momentum strategy. Don't know what habrich thinks of this, but 6 months prior returns fairly well predicts the next 6 month returns positively. I presume there is a lower limit of stocks to be held to escape the n=1 problem but this has been tested more thoroughly than I think any other strategy and is certainly regarded as one of the most pervasive asset pricing anomalies alongside post-earnings announcement drift.

The original paper is here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2328882?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents (happy to forward the pdf to anyone who's keen). Don't be put off by its age - its one of the most well-cited papers in finance, and is the kind of paper asset pricing firms employ researchers for to emulate these strategies.

If I were to ever put this together, I'd do this

[seankenny]

At the risk of going off on another tangent, poker is a very efficient game in the medium to long term for transferring money from lower skilled players to higher skilled players.

Perhaps it was a better example than he realised.

As an aside, did anyone ever meet the climber and professional poker player John Rosholt on trips to the US?

https://rockandice.com/people/john-rosholt-climber-and-gambler-disappears-in-las-vegas/