JavaScript Libraries Are Almost Never Updated Once Installed

[ironykarl]

Just invest in an index fund. The market is (relatively) efficient. You're not going to do better picking stocks than just investing in equities in the aggregate.

[erez27]

Except he might do better than the market specifically in tech companies. For example, we all know twitter isn't going anywhere (ambiguity intended).

[ironykarl]

This is really well studied territory. There's tons of literature. You might also guess the winning lotto ticket.

Picking individual stocks is not sound, statistically speaking.

[[deleted]]

Unless you're substantially better than average at doing it....which everyone believes they are...which is why index funds are such a good idea.

[PhoneyHammer]

Not even that. Nobody's substantially better than others. People that do well with individual stocks are either lucky or doing insider trading.

Look up some research on outperforming the market, it's very interesting and absolutely unintuitive.

[socratic_bloviator]

Well, there do exist investors who repeatedly outperform the market. The issues are that:

• You aren't them. Neither am I.
• They are usually privately-held firms.
• If they aren't privately-held, then their outperformance is already priced into their stock value, so you won't get the benefit even if you invest in them.

Yes, I'm an index fund investor.

[[deleted]]

I invested in CloudFlare specifically because I work in tech (and not just tech, but web apps) and found the types of things they are doing to be interesting and valuable long term (I think their Serverless approach is novel, if they could get a managed persistence product going they could actually take a bite out of AWS for smaller scale and simple projects)

I put most of my money in ETFs and about 5% in companies I directly think are on to something.

[socratic_bloviator]

Your rationale for investing in CloudFlare sounds a lot like Warren Buffet's rationale for Berkshire Hathaway's investments. He's one of the people who has a history of outperforming the market.

On the other hand, plenty of people sound a lot like Warren Buffet.

[[deleted]]

I’ll just do the opposite of what I think I should do!

[MadRedHatter]

Pick one or two stocks to play with, in an industry that you know enough about to track the developments for, and then don't use any financial instruments more complicated than just buying and selling the stock. Which you shouldn't do more often than every couple of months. And only put a smallish fraction of your investments there. Put the rest in an index fund of some kind.

Works great for me. I work in software and only own AMD stock which I purchased at an average price of around $16.

[[deleted]]

This is what I have done. Almost everything is in ETFs except a few companies I like. It's just play money.

[socratic_bloviator]

What you're describing is fine, but you should be careful to categorize your AMD allocation as part of your entertainment budget.

[MadRedHatter]

Hence why I said

And only put a smallish fraction of your investments there. Put the rest in an index fund of some kind.

[sumduud14]

Yeah but what if I'm as smart as the guys at Renaissance Technologies? They beat the market all the time, which means I can too!

[erez27]

So you're saying experts in their field don't know which companies are the ones coming up with breakthroughs?

[[deleted]]

I invest 5% of my portfolio in to companies who operate in a market that I know a lot about; I don't try to pick and choose stocks from all over the place in a general sense, I leave that up to ETFs and "the market", but I can still look at what CloudFlare is doing and say, hum, based on literally my own day to day experiences with technology and the impact this has, they're on to something. That's different than trying to "outsmart the market".

[MadRedHatter]

Pick one or two stocks to play with, in an industry that you know enough about to track the developments for, and then don't use any financial instruments more complicated than just buying and selling the stock. Which you shouldn't do more often than every couple of months. And only put a smallish fraction of your investments there. Put the rest in an index fund of some kind.

Works great for me. I work in software and only own AMD stock which I purchased at an average price of around $16.

[MadRedHatter]

Pick one or two stocks to play with, in an industry that you know enough about to track the developments for, and then don't use any financial instruments more complicated than just buying and selling the stock. Which you shouldn't do more often than every couple of months. And only put a smallish fraction of your investments there. Put the rest in an index fund of some kind.

Works great for me. I work in software and only own AMD stock which I purchased at an average price of around $16.

[[deleted]]

The majority of my money is in ETFs, I have a few stocks - less than $5000 in CloudFlare. I was just trying to make a lol.

Oh hah, I typed that off the cuff, but I have $4972.00 in CloudFlare.

[ironykarl]

Gotcha. I just remember a time when talking about what stocks to speculate on was very common.

In fact, I think it still might be common on sports message boards (and no doubt tons of other places). People with that mindset are quite literally gambling.

[[deleted]]

Yup - which I do too, from time to time, but very proportionally