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by lucb1e 2496 days ago
So basically you're not allowed to trade with foreknowledge, it has to be a lottery?

Stocks always seemed like legal gambling to me. If you can't predict it and you can't use any edge that others don't know about, then doing anything but using index funds is gambling, or am I missing something?
2 comments
anonu 2495 days ago
Read Matt Lewis and his writings on insider trading. As he would say: Insider trading is about theft. If you pickup a dollar bill on the ground, could you be accused of theft? Probably not...

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_theory_(investments). So you can get an edge by sourcing information from various places and piecing it together better than anyone else... that's fine as well.

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chimeracoder 2495 days ago
I think you mean Matt Levine, not Matt Lewis. Matt Levine has written about how insider trading is really about theft, not fairness: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-10-05/justic...

> If you pickup a dollar bill on the ground, could you be accused of theft? Probably not...

Depends on the country - in some countries, yes, that is actually considered theft.

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anonu 2495 days ago
Yes - Matt Levine!
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0x445442 2496 days ago
The only thing I would say you are missing is differentiating index funds. Also insurance companies are basically bookies.
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lucb1e 2496 days ago
Regarding differentiating index funds, what are those? When ducking "differentiating index funds", I find results about index funds versus ETFs (afaik an ETF is just a stock) or index funds versus mutual funds (not sure what those are). Are ETFs and mutual funds what you mean by differentiating index funds, or am I looking at the wrong thing?

> Also insurance companies are basically bookies.

Hehe yes, it also occurred to me that being in a car accident is basically winning the insurance lottery that car owners pay into.

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