
How to earn your macroeconomics and finance white belt as a software developer - andrenth
https://notamonadtutorial.com/how-to-earn-your-macroeconomics-and-finance-white-belt-as-a-software-developer-136e7454866f
======
jackcosgrove
I have been an on again off again student of economics since college. The most
important things to know, in my opinion, are:

1) The historical inflation rate is 2-3% per year in the US.

2) In most times and places in the US real estate appreciates slightly more
than the rate of inflation at 3-4% nominally. So real estate grows much more
slowly than most expect. A primary residence should be seen as the cost of
shelter, not an investment, because...

3) US stocks have appreciated at an inflation-adjusted rate of 6-7% per year
(8-10% nominal) even accounting for booms and busts. Speaking of...

4) No one can reliably predict the business cycle let alone individual stock
performance absent inside information. Stock picking is a losing game.

5) The best way to invest in stocks for the vast majority of people is to buy
the market in an index fund and minimize fees.

So to distill this down to three life lessons:

1) Don't plan on renting your whole life because inflation will catch up with
you.

2) Buy the most inexpensive house you can tolerate.

3) Put everything else in index funds every paycheck, and only check your
balance every now and then. Let time be on your side.

~~~
jackpirate
_In most times and places in the US real estate appreciates slightly more than
the rate of inflation at 3-4% nominally. So real estate grows much more slowly
than most expect. A primary residence should be seen as the cost of shelter,
not an investment, because..._

Your real estate appreciation figure doesn't factor in things like: rent
(either payed to you if its nor your primary residence or rent you don't have
to pay if living in your primary residence) and all the tax breaks associated
with home ownership. With those additional sources of income, it's possible
for real estate to be competitive with stocks.

~~~
01100011
It also doesn't factor in home maintenance or transactional costs. It doesn't
factor in time required to maintain a home. It doesn't factor in lost
opportunities due to the increase in expense and hassle of relocation.

Renters are happier. That is worth something.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/realestate/homeownership-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/realestate/homeownership-
the-key-to-happiness.html)

~~~
vonmoltke
> It doesn't factor in lost opportunities due to the increase in expense and
> hassle of relocation.

Selling my residence is so far down my personal list of "frictions to
relocation" as to be irrelevant. I hate moving, period. So does my wife.

I also personally do not see having to dispose of a property when moving as
that big a deal. Again, that's me.

> Renters are happier. That is worth something.

First off, the article doesn't say that. It says that owners are generally not
any happier.

Second, it's one citation. You shouldn't be making absolute statements off one
citation.

Third, the overall thrust of the research is the more general "experience >
stuff". I find that to be a highly personal decision and not something where
population studies can inform the individual.

~~~
01100011
[https://books.google.com/books?id=E6igdQIKdQkC&lpg=PT38&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=E6igdQIKdQkC&lpg=PT38&ots=5rRqFj8Nlq&dq=%22renters%20have%20more%20sex%22&pg=PT38#v=onepage&q=%22renters%20have%20more%20sex%22&f=false)

[https://www.zillow.com/blog/how-to-keep-the-spark-
alive-1698...](https://www.zillow.com/blog/how-to-keep-the-spark-
alive-169812/)

------
mushufasa
If you are wont to read all of this, you might buy the Volume 1 of the CFA
exam books instead.

After having been through an economics degree beforehand, I was impressed at
comprehensiveness and conciseness. They're written to be read, unlike a lot of
academic textbooks that are written to be references for lectures.

There are several thousands of pages in Volume I, but that's because they
cover so much ground. If you're looking for a holistic understanding, and
would otherwise pick up a dozen different paperbacks from some online blog
list, you might do well instead to pick up the official introduction for
finance by and for the financial industry.

For a general understanding of macroeconomics, I'd recommend just Cassidy's
'How Markets Fail' and you're set.

~~~
lbotos
> Volume 1 of the CFA exam books

I'm seeing a couple of Google results that are different publishers. Do you
have a link you'd mind sharing so I look at the right ones?

~~~
revel
If you don't care about the designation then the most cost effective thing to
do is just get the books from a previous year from somewhere like Craigslist
or ebay. The official syllabus is published by the CFA Institute. Schweser
have a cliff notes-style abbreviated version of the syllabus. It's faster and
more direct but it doesn't go into as much detail. Level 1 is roughly
equivalent to a bachelors in finance. After level 2 you'll roughly have the
same level of understanding of finance, econ and accounting that an MBA would
give you. Level 3 is more esoteric and deals more with portfolio management
than other fields.

~~~
mushufasa
I agree with this. Here's the official link though:
[https://www.cfainstitute.org/programs/cfa/curriculum/print-v...](https://www.cfainstitute.org/programs/cfa/curriculum/print-
version)

------
dnprock
The surprising thing about economics for me: it is not a science. What you
learn is a perspective. But people sell their version hard. It gets dogmatic.

~~~
mathieutd
Economics professor here. I disagree. We formulate theories that we test using
data. Same as physics except that economics is much more messy. Another
difficulty is that in many cases (macroeconomics for instance) we cannot do
experiments to test theories. This makes it much harder to learn from the
data.

~~~
dnprock
I mentioned economics gets dogmatic. Occasionally, we even have economists who
attempt to re-define science. Here's a quote from the article:

"Andrew Lo, an MIT economist, said that while physics has three laws that
explain 99% of the phenomena, finance has 99 laws that explain only 3%. Not
only do we not fully understand how the economy works but also there is an
endless debate on how it should function."

You can have your own science threshold. But I think calling economics science
is doing disservice to science. It distorts the public's perception of
science.

~~~
claudiawerner
Not only that, but economics seems to have suffered (and in many cases largely
ignored) many of the methodological and foundational critiques of both its
predecessor (as political economy) and its modern incarnation (capitalist
economics). These criticisms come from both inside and outside the field, not
to mention from a variety of hetorodox (periphery) sources, not limited to
neo-Ricardians, Marxians, Post-Keynesians, Walrasian, and even Austrian
School.

Every science has its object (that's what Plato thinks anyway) and thus
different tools and methods are required for different objects. The tools in
the science of philosophy are different to those of biology, which are still
different to psychology. This is not a criticism of economics, philosophy, or
science, since I don't consider science to be purely the methodology of the
natural sciences. The multiplicity of seriously considered and valuable views
within both philosophy and economics (there are more examples though) is
unheard of in the natural sciences to my knowledge.

To say that economics is a science in the same sense as the natural sciences
requires excluding heterodox schools since their methodology leads to
different conclusions to orthodox economics. That is to say, we would need to
declare one methodology as absolutely correct and all others as incorrect.
From my limited knowledge reading around heterodox economics[0], I don't think
such an exclusion is warranted.

[0] The likes of Sraffa, Veneziani and Yoshihara, Shaikh, Kliman, Mohun, etc.

~~~
zwaps
I would rather say that most sciences differ from natural sciences. This is
certainly true for any social science, but also for biology, medicine,
certainly psychology and so on.

Similarly, heterodox schools are usually peripheral because they are
peripheral to the current academic discourse. So for example Marxian primary
material is a critique of past-tense economics. Post-Keynesians have a fetish
for one particular concept or method (flows, MMT, crisis prediction) and
reject everything outside of it. The Austrian School rejects the use of data
and even formal modeling altogether, all while academic economics becomes more
experiment based.

Nevertheless, there are heterodox professors even at universities ranked
within the top 10, and numerous initiatives for inclusion. So given the wide
chasm that needs to be bridged for academic discussion, I think the degree of
exclusion is actually rather low.

~~~
claudiawerner
>So for example Marxian primary material is a critique of past-tense
economics.

Marxism has come a long way since Marx, though; a big part of the field today
is the applicability of Marxian theories to aspects of modern economies, such
as globalization, neoliberalism, imperialism and digital goods. By saying
their critique is only aimed at political economy, you're charging them with
irrelevance, which to me doesn't seem the case. Being ignored does not mean
irrelevance.

------
scott_s
In most modern martial art discipline rankings I'm aware of, white belt is
your rank when you step on the mat with no experience, so you don't really
"earn" it. I think the metaphor would be whatever color the rank above white
is, but that varies widely across disciplines.

~~~
unbalancedparen
I am the author. Thanks for the comment, I have just changed the title from
white to yellow.

~~~
benj111
But now I'm searching the comments wondering why the titles don't match.

To someone who doesn't do martial arts, white belt means something to me
(inexperienced), as does black belt, all other colours are unknown points in
between.

In conclusion. The HN crowd are pedantic and argumentative, so stay away from
metaphors. :)

------
westurner
Thanks for the wealth of resources in this post. Here are a few more:

"Python for Finance: Analyze Big Financial Data" (2014, 2018)
[https://g.co/kgs/qkY8J6](https://g.co/kgs/qkY8J6) ...
[https://pyalgo.tpq.io](https://pyalgo.tpq.io) also includes the "Finance with
Python" course and this book as a PDF and Jupyter notebooks.

Quantopian put out a call for the best Value Investing algos (implemented in
quantopian/zipline) awhile back. This post links to those and other value
investing resources:
[https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-19181453](https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-19181453)
(Ctrl-F "econo")

"Lectures in Quantitative Economics as Python and Julia Notebooks"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19083479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19083479)
links to these excellent lectures and a number of tools for working with
actual data from FRED, ECB, Eurostat, ILO, IMF, OECD, UNSD, UNESCO, World
Bank, Quandl.

One thing that many finance majors, courses, and resources often fail to
identify is the role that startup and small businesses play in economic growth
and _actual value creation_ : jobs, GDP, return on _direct_ capital
investment. Most do not succeed, but it is possible to do better than index
funds and have far more impact in terms of sustainable investment than as an
owner of a nearly-sure-bet index fund that owns some shares and takes a hands-
off approach to business management, research, product development, and
operations.

Is it possible to possess a comprehensive understanding of finance and
economics but still not have personal finance down? Personal finance:
r/personalfinance/wiki, "Consumer science (a.k.a. home economics) as a college
major"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17894632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17894632)

------
fauigerzigerk
I have two tips to share:

1) Learn some accounting first. I see a ton of truly weird debates about
economics and taxes that are based completely false ideas of basic accounting
concepts.

2) If you use DEGIRO as a broker, make sure you understand the tax
implications of their cash handling. They keep customer "cash" in a money
market fund, not in a bank account. This is especially relevant if you hold
foreign currency in your account. It's also relevant if the amount of
disposals in each tax year has consequences for your tax return (such as the
£45000 threshold for submitting a CGT return in the UK).

~~~
iM8t
Would you please care to elaborate on point 2 or provide additional
information to learn about this? BTW - I'm from the EU.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I'm going to reply tonight. Unfortunately I'm in a huge rush right now.

~~~
sulZ
If you find that you have time, I'm also curious.

------
vonseel
Ha! I was an accounting undergrad and graduate finance/banking student before
transitioning to software many years ago. I skimmed the article and still have
many of the mentioned books and authors on my bookshelf. So, he's probably got
a pretty good guide here. Although, I'm not sure why someone would want to
learn all of this - it isn't a particularly stimulating subject - and probably
overkill for managing personal investments.

I personally wouldn't advise option-trading as part of any personal investment
strategy, unless you're doing it with a limited amount of money strictly as a
hobby / educational gamble. It's just too complex a topic to risk money on
without serious research - and that cost time (money) too.

~~~
vonseel
Additionally, after spending most of the 2010s in software development and
learning several languages and software engineering practices, I can't say I
remember much of what I learned from any of those books or courses I took in
my past life. My brain has been saturated by technology and other interests. I
guess you have to continue reading and staying up-to-date on any topic in
order to keep it fresh in your mind.

------
ravieira
My two cents are:

1\. Do not buy an expensive car; 2\. Do not buy a car unless really necessary
(of course not feasible/practical in many parts/cities of the world); 3\.
Avoid all kinds of subscriptions you can. Anything that consistently affects
your income; 4\. If you're making good income, don't act like it's going to be
like this for ever; 5\. Try to stay ahead in your career so that you're
eligible for the upper end salaries;

~~~
astura
It's perfectly okay to buy an expensive car if you can afford it and it brings
you joy.

People have trouble with the "can afford it" part, anything can look
affordable if it's broken down into enough monthly payments. But one must look
at the bigger picture and also work towards not having to borrow money for the
rest of your life.

The problem I have with most personal finance advice is it usually comes down
to simply moralizing. The whole point of personal finance is it should be
personal.

~~~
pm90
Usually people tend to buy expensive cars that they can't afford. And
expensive cars give most people joy. There is that feeling of owning a shiny
new thing that other people will see you in.

I kinda agree with you that personal finance shouldn't be about moralizing,
but only in cases where that moralizing actually doesn't really affect you at
all. The bullshit stuff about not buying coffee and instead saving up to
thousands of dollars or whatever.

An expensive car (usually just a car in general) ends up being one of the most
significant financial investment in the large majority of Americans' lifetime.
So its wise to moralize about a decision which has the possibility of having
such a huge impact.

The only time I would personally consider buying a fancy car is that if I got
really really lucky and made over $10 million dollars somehow, at which point
a $100k car is not insignificant, but not a sizeable part of my wealth
portfolio. Until then I have my trusty Civic to take me around : ).

~~~
astura
When we moralize about how "expensive car = bad" (no matter the context) we
take the "personal" out of "personal finance."

Some people are gearheads, just because you aren't doesn't mean you should
moralize the preference of others.

~~~
pm90
Are most people who purchase expensive cars gearheads? I would wager they're
not. In which case I have every right to moralize about their poor choices.

The existence of outliers doesn't prove a rule wrong.

------
pedro1976
Economics is a branch of social science. They always try to sell it as some
kind of natural science, based on mathematical models, but in the end its just
social dynamics.

~~~
splintercell
That's a bit of an exaggeration.

You can't say that it's all just social dynamics.

Take for instance, there is no social dynamics rule you can state like the
rule of supply and demand, or the principle of time preference (that ceritas
paribus, people prefer things sooner than later). These are not just 'social
dynamics'.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, it's human nature. That may not be "social dynamics", but it's not
physics, either.

~~~
splintercell
It's not human nature either. I highly recommend that you don't brush it off
that quickly.

There are two kinds of 'body movements' by humans, 'involuntary' or 'non-
rational', like sneezing, or tripping, vs voluntary or rational, like you
choosing to brush your teeth, or driving a car or negotiating a contract.

If a human says that he doesn't want to divorce his wife but he can't feel the
same passion towards her, or if someone is trying to lose weight but is unable
to stop eating, then trying to understand that action is psychology.

However, if we just stop to the fact that if you perform an action,
irrespective of your 'stated' reasoning behind it, it does demonstrate
something.

When we look at these actions which are pertinent to monetary aspects of those
rational or voluntary actions, we find out that we can build a whole system of
science (or logic, if you don't like saying it's a kind of science), which
leads us to other conclusions.

For instance if you say that you would love to spend the spring break in
France, but then when the time comes, you find out that tickets are cheaper
for Mexico, and instead you spend it in Mexico, then that means that your
demonstrated preference was to have that extra money and do other things with
it in Mexico, instead to have less money in France (irrespective of what you
said).

What this means is that if prices of Mexico tickets were changed and it
becomes as expensive as tickets to France, then you will change your decision
also (though you don't have to, in which case we will learn that you actually
didn't care about going to France anyways).

Either way, when you build a system of all the logical inferences, like in
Mathematics, smaller concepts and axioms can lead you to build other complex
mathematical conclusions, you have the same thing in economics (which leads
you to the concepts of interest rates, prices, supply and demand, autistic
intervention, binary intervention, triangular intervention etc).

------
bedobi
This isn't serious macroeconomics or finance. People like Taleb are
psuedointellectual quacks, not actual economists.

For anyone who's interested,
[https://reddit.com/r/badeconomics](https://reddit.com/r/badeconomics) is a
great resource for takedowns of this kind of garbage.

~~~
unbalancedparen
Taleb is not an economist, he is a trader. I never recommended him to learn
about economy.

~~~
ThirdFoundation
And I think he's useful at least as a voice that challenges some conventional
mental models for looking at things in math, finance, and decision making.

He's not an infallible visionary and should not be taken as gospel, but I
don't think we should disqualify all of his ideas and opinions. I've enjoyed
reading a lot of his books.

However, as you said, he's not a good introduction into the economy and
probably isn't accessible for many beginners.

------
Mikeb85
> Andrew Lo, an MIT economist, said that while physics has three laws that
> explain 99% of the phenomena, finance has 99 laws that explain only 3%. Not
> only do we not fully understand how the economy works but also there is an
> endless debate on how it should function. Everyone has values and an
> ideology even if they don’t tell you.

Except we do understand _how_ the economy functions. Maybe not well enough to
predict everything with 99% certainty, but as well as we can understand any
complex phenomenon. He's right however that everyone has a different opinion
and their ideology leaks into their economic analysis.

Also, this article is more about finance than economics. Want to understand
economics? Learn about supply/demand and game theory. Want to learn about
macroeconomics? Study models like the IS/LM model.

Want to attempt to make money with some sort of investment? This article is an
OK intro. But always keep in mind that lots of very smart people with very
specific schooling and tons of experience are trying to do the same thing, and
they'll always beat you to the punch, because you studied CS and they studied
finance.

------
SirLJ
More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of A New Elite by Mallaby does
just that. A quote from the book: Although Weymar looked to his teachers for
help in refining his mathematical and computing skills, he was unimpressed by
their efficient-market theories. “I thought random walk was bullshit,” he said
later. “The whole idea that an individual can’t make serious money with a
competitive edge over the rest of the market is wacko.”

------
rubyn00bie
Sigh goodbye Karma, but...

I think this is horseshit.

The reason being: most of what you read online will be heavily modified to
support the ideology of the author... which quite frankly, outside of
neuroscience, is the biggest problem Economics faces: politics and ideology.

Economics is not finance, nor is finance economics.

Economics is about resource management, and both micro/macro are just that at
different levels. The real holy grail of Econ is how merge them, what I think
lies I the effects of agglomeration...

If you want to get your white belt in economics: go read something historical,
not mathematical. Ricardo, Keynes, Friedman, Smith, Galbraith, Veblen, Marx,
Krugman... the math and statistics come easily and intuitively if you
understand the theory.

Rates of change themselves don’t make you fluent in economics, showing why the
fuck you even need that rate of change is economics.

~~~
unbalancedparen
Hi rubyn00bie. I am the author. I agree with what you wrote. It is really
important to understand the history of economic political thought. Nowadays
most economic careers, specially in the developed world, are way too focused
on mathematics. That is why I wrote: "Not only do we not fully understand how
the economy works but also there is an endless debate on how it should
function. Everyone has values and an ideology even if they don’t tell you. You
should keep that in mind while studying economics. In this roadmap I try to
recommend the tools easily available and that are a part of the current
economic thought."

------
aj7
Until you actually risk money, you know little about investing, no matter how
many books you read. In this way, investing is much, much different than
economics, or physics, where you can learn a lot from books. But thank you for
the bibliography.

~~~
unbalancedparen
I agree. It is really important to have practical experience. It is like
programming. You can read a lot of books but if you don't code, you don't
really learn.

------
icedchocolate
To add to the resources in this thread, the book sitting on my bookshelf that
I used for Derivatives at uni (options & futures, hedging, swaps, etc.) is
Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets, but John C. Hull

------
yogeshp
CFA Institute has made their resources for Claritas Certification (Investent
Foundations) freely available online [1]. It covers ample material on
economics and finance for people from non-finance background. Material is not
as rigorous as CFA level 1 but is sufficient for Software Engineers.

Link:

[1] [https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/programs/investment-
foundati...](https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/programs/investment-
foundations/curriculum/download)

------
gregknicholson
The article doesn't seem to explain why this subject is important — why should
I want to learn about this?

------
icedchocolate
Most important thing to know about economics, from Mankiw & studying economics
both at school and uni: (1) Resources are limited, but our desire is
unlimited. The function of the market is to find the equilibrium amount of
each thing to produce, at a certain price. Also, there is always a market,
even if money is totally removed. We will always have things to divide up
between us. (2) The demand/supply curve. It honestly is unbelievably important
and you won’t understand the fundamentals until you understand this, imo. Marx
didn’t understand the economy because he didn’t understand this, he only
understood the supply part of the equation (a friend who took the history of
economic thought & passed his notes onto me taught me this). Practice using
this to understand a government policy that impacts the market, think through
what it does to prices, volumes, and the curves themselves.

Basic accounting concepts and terminology is also quite useful, as another
commenter said. Then the function of the central banks, why they do what they
do, and how.

I do recommend, to understand the GFC, Reading “Financial Accounting Theory”,
by William R. Scott, pages 9-15 (section 1.3). If you want to understand dodgy
accounting, this is also a good book. Aside from Mankiw’s principles of
Microeconomics, Bernanke’s Principles of Macroeconomics is also good.

------
rb808
The problem I have with this advice is that its all based on the last 50 years
which have been absolutely incredible returns for investors. You should also
read more history of what happened to Japanese property investors in the 90s,
Argentinian investors in the 70s and Russian/Chinese/Cambodian capitalists
before their communist takeovers.

~~~
facundo_olano
I read a few of the books mentioned in the article (Random Walk, Common Sense,
Global Value and Asset Allocation) and they certainly dedicate a lot of space
to study the history: bubbles, how returns fluctuated over the decades, etc.

Most importantly, the key takeaway of those introductory books is to diversify
your portfolio, which, if you do, should limit your losses in events such as
those you mention.

------
ucaetano
> Learn basic finance to invest your own money

> The next step on your journey should be to get some practical experience.
> The best way to do this is to open a brokerage account to invest some of
> your own money.

Wow, I can't believe someone would suggest doing this as a way to learn
finance, when ALL finance literature reaches exactly the same conclusion: that
is a terrible idea.

The author clearly doesn't understand finance and financial markets...

But hey, follow his advice anyone, someone has to make really bad investing
decisions so that us making the solid investment decisions can beat the
average.

~~~
chucksmash
I took "some of your own money" to mean "an amount you can afford to lose"

Few things teach as well as the "...and it's gone" moment when you're dealing
with money you worked for. Better to learn the lesson with a couple hundred
dollars in play when you're young than with a couple hundred thousand when
you're forty and you think your expertise in <whatever> gives you an edge in
<unrelated investing thing>.

~~~
ucaetano
The problem is that it isn't "amount you can afford to lose": you'll lose.

It is a guaranteed way to lose money on average. It is just like gambling: if
you want to do it for fun, and count the loss on your budget, fine. But don't
fool yourself into thinking that it is a sensible investment or that you're
doing it because "you know finance".

Just don't. It is a bad idea and particularly a symptom of overconfident
people who think that "they are smart and can read trends and predict the
market". Nope.

~~~
chucksmash
You're interpreting what I'm saying (and what I believe the author is saying)
as "amount you won't mind losing, so just go for it bro, you might hit it
big!"

Maybe I'm reading too much into the original text, but when I said, "amount
you can afford to lose," I intended an implicit "because you will lose it and
then you will learn" that I think the author is also implying.

If you do a 9 week fake money stock pick'em exercise (say in a FINA class),
people will follow it for exactly 9 weeks, some will lose, some will win, and
everybody who doesn't win will take away "gee I should have picked better,
that was obvious in retrospect" which obviously isn't the point.

With real money, I feel like you're more likely to learn the intended lesson.
If it works out for nine weeks, you'll keep at it because it's actual money.
You'll learn eventually.

~~~
ucaetano
> I intended an implicit "because you will lose it and then you will learn"
> that I think the author is also implying.

But you won't learn, because there is nothing to learn, just as there isn't
anything to learn from betting on the lottery or in a casino.

Well, there is one thing to learn: you should not do it!

> If you do a 9 week fake money stock pick'em exercise (say in a FINA class),
> people will follow it for exactly 9 weeks, some will lose, some will win,
> and everybody who doesn't win will take away "gee I should have picked
> better, that was obvious in retrospect" which obviously isn't the point.

On average, people will lose.

Seriously, people won Nobel prizes proving this. Do you think that they were
wrong?

> With real money, I feel like you're more likely to learn the intended
> lesson.

Which is: you should not be doing it in the first place!

This is like spending $10,000 in a casino to learn that you should not be
putting your investments in a casino.

Here, I'll save you some money: I'll charge you just $500 to tell you that you
should not be actively trading and picking assets.

You're welcome, please give me your CC info so I can charge you.

~~~
pm90
Heh. Reminds me of a friend who keeps "investing" which is handpicking stocks
and hoping that they succeed. Now he has a group of friends and they spend
most of their time playing this stupid game of trying to pick a winner. Which
sounds like a waste of both money and time.

~~~
astura
This advice is how you end up like my friend: he's got thousands of dollars in
high interest credit card debt and a porfolio full of stocks. Like, dude,
you're paying 30% interest to gamble on stocks and he thinks he's being
prudent because "investing."

When people say "save" or "invest" without context, people end up borrowing at
high interest in order to do so. I saw a guy on Reddit with like $30,000 in
credit card debt and $20,000 in a savings account.

