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At first, I'd like to present a story that most people on this forum would be familiar with. You're playing someone in the game. He's significantly less skilled than you. His knowledge of the game is much lower than yours. In fact, he might not know anything more than building two different units. You've already figured out every single build order from here to the OSL. You've studied every map and know every matchup better than you know your alphabets. In fact, chances are your alphabets are only filled with TvT, TvZ, TvP, TvR, ZvT, ZvP, ZvZ, ZvR, etc and the random hotkeys.
But you play him and somehow you lose. Call it cheese call it whatever but it happened. You're boggled at how in the world this complete amateur beats you.
This is the same story I feel when looking over market trends, investor forums and the amount of times economists have just been flat out wrong. You can't discount the common man. The common man who doesn't fall under, read theories or even understand anything beyond the points of his stocks that go or down.
I have an uncle who plays the stock market. By "play", I meant he simply purchases stocks that appear on the rise and sell when they start to fall. Simple economics right? For him, there is no long term potential, undervalued, overvalued, etc. There's only dollars and cents of what each share was when he purchased and each share when he checked the laptop. What Wall Street doesn't take into account is that simple amateurs like my uncle are there playing with the stock market every day. And there are many dollars that add up to build a legion of like minded amateurs.
So like in finance, like in Starcraft, never discount the random nature of an amateur. =)
 
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wall street certainly takes them into account, and what you're talking about is just being a lucky donk
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I think I phrased things wrong there. What I meant was more along the lines of, Wall Street shouldn't be surprised when the average person throws off their expectations. Also, I think you meant "dunk". =)
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Calgary25989 Posts
What Wall Street doesn't account for is that which is completely uncountable. Is that your point?
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More or less. It wasn't meant to be a specific critique as much as observance of "hey this happens in a lot of things, not just starcraft!"
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The random stock investor is like the random Starcraft amateur which is somewhat like that guy who plays poker and is horrible but gets a lucky streak of stupid good hands. It's not that people don't realize that people like this happen, but they are rare and their net effect on the system overall is pretty small.
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On January 07 2010 01:25 KissBlade wrote:
At first, I'd like to present a story that most people on this forum would be familiar with. You're playing someone in the game. He's significantly less skilled than you. His knowledge of the game is much lower than yours. In fact, he might not know anything more than building two different units. You've already figured out every single build order from here to the OSL. You've studied every map and know every matchup better than you know your alphabets. In fact, chances are your alphabets are only filled with TvT, TvZ, TvP, TvR, ZvT, ZvP, ZvZ, ZvR, etc and the random hotkeys.
But you play him and somehow you lose. Call it cheese call it whatever but it happened. You're boggled at how in the world this complete amateur beats you.
This is the same story I feel when looking over market trends, investor forums and the amount of times economists have just been flat out wrong. You can't discount the common man. The common man who doesn't fall under, read theories or even understand anything beyond the points of his stocks that go or down.
I have an uncle who plays the stock market. By "play", I meant he simply purchases stocks that appear on the rise and sell when they start to fall. Simple economics right? For him, there is no long term potential, undervalued, overvalued, etc. There's only dollars and cents of what each share was when he purchased and each share when he checked the laptop. What Wall Street doesn't take into account is that simple amateurs like my uncle are there playing with the stock market every day. And there are many dollars that add up to build a legion of like minded amateurs.
So like in finance, like in Starcraft, never discount the random nature of an amateur. =)
Amateurs do not make up that much of the market. In fact institutional investors and sophisticated investors move the market more. In my view, the amateur is 1/1000, there is a chance he will win, but over the long term he will lose. The majority of investing is making sure you win more than you lose and thus you can make a career out of it. Your uncle will pick a wrong stock and lose his principal along with his appetite for investing in the market someday.
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im just irritated that you're confusing finance with economics
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As said, I should've worded things differently than giving off the interpretation that amateurs are responsible for moving most of the market (depends on the type of stock, etc) or that they're likely to win in the long run. But good points nonetheless.
On January 07 2010 02:01 Caller wrote:
im just irritated that you're confusing finance with economics
I'm not saying they're the same, just stating the idea of random occurrences due to said amateurs can throw off things in many fields, just like in Starcraft.
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It's kind of the same with weather.
My meteorology professor cannot predict rainfall from cloud's appereance as good as his father who's a farmer and simply has waay more "field" experience.
or am I wrong?
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It's not random behavior -_-
Amateurs don't have enough invested to make a difference or to earn that much money. You can maybe keep buying safe stocks and store up net worth until you retire, but unless you play with really risky stuff, there's no chance that you'll make a lot of money, especially if you don't start with a significant amount of cash. Also, there's a huge chance that you'll lose.
In iccup, I might drop a game to a D or d+ here and there but I know that I'm better than them and will win more than I lose over multiple games. I also beat people that are much better than me at times, but in general, people that are better than me usually give me a spanking. Amateurs can get lucky once in a while, but you shouldn't hold you breath.
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17018 Posts
Such short term investing amounts to little more than gambling. For every uncle out there who can "play the market" and make money off of short term "investments", there are countless others who buy stocks, see any indication of them failing, panic, and sell everything at a loss "before it goes down even further". It's a really common logical fallacy (compare with the one cancer victim who happened to survive five years while doing nothing but drinking grapefruit juice and praying. It's much the same thing).
Although it's great that your uncle can make money from stocks in the short term, the only way that's virtually guaranteed to give you a decent return is to go for the long term, investing in relatively safe mutual funds which place their risk in hundreds of different stocks, or even entire markets.
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I agree with what you guys are saying about the small time investors are not the ones that change decisions. Like I said, unfortunately I think I gave off the wrong impressions with my post =(! However, I do find these responses worth reading nonetheless =).
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The market is designed to thwart economists. Any person who knows how to work the market will work the market. There is no rational reason to do it for any length of time. If they cannot work the market, only then will they proclaim to be able to predict the ebb and tide of an ultra complex system with which he can only gain the barest understanding to all that will listen. And of course they will be wrong because they - by definition - can't possibly know what they are doing.
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You beat around the bush in this blog and don't really mkae a good conclusion... you should read the asians can't drink blog and learn how to make a good conclusion from there
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Korea (South)17174 Posts
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If he's that bad he can't beat you mid/long game.
If he cheeses you, you cannot know the lenght of his sc knowledge because u'll be dead before he techs :D
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On January 07 2010 01:42 KissBlade wrote:
More or less. It wasn't meant to be a specific critique as much as observance of "hey this happens in a lot of things, not just starcraft!"
It doesn't happen in Starcraft.
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On January 07 2010 01:25 KissBlade wrote:
At first, I'd like to present a story that most people on this forum would be familiar with. You're playing someone in the game. He's significantly less skilled than you. His knowledge of the game is much lower than yours. In fact, he might not know anything more than building two different units. You've already figured out every single build order from here to the OSL. You've studied every map and know every matchup better than you know your alphabets. In fact, chances are your alphabets are only filled with TvT, TvZ, TvP, TvR, ZvT, ZvP, ZvZ, ZvR, etc and the random hotkeys.
But you play him and somehow you lose. Call it cheese call it whatever but it happened. You're boggled at how in the world this complete amateur beats you.
This is the same story I feel when looking over market trends, investor forums and the amount of times economists have just been flat out wrong. You can't discount the common man. The common man who doesn't fall under, read theories or even understand anything beyond the points of his stocks that go or down.
I have an uncle who plays the stock market. By "play", I meant he simply purchases stocks that appear on the rise and sell when they start to fall. Simple economics right? For him, there is no long term potential, undervalued, overvalued, etc. There's only dollars and cents of what each share was when he purchased and each share when he checked the laptop. What Wall Street doesn't take into account is that simple amateurs like my uncle are there playing with the stock market every day. And there are many dollars that add up to build a legion of like minded amateurs.
So like in finance, like in Starcraft, never discount the random nature of an amateur. =)
roar i am aggregate demand
beware I live
RUN!
RUN!
RUN!
I HUNGER.
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EPT
