[llampx]

Do you know how this whole thing started? It seems you're just coming in and dismissing the whole thing, when the person who started it with $50k is now sitting on gains of $50m and even people who bought in yesterday are up almost 2x.

[ghaff]

And some people who can't really afford to buy Powerball tickets every week. And a few of them hit it big. Doesn't make it a rational choice from a purely economic perspective.

[ryandward]

The biggest flaw of conventional economic theory is that "people are rational".

[llampx]

Do you see all trading on the stock market as speculative and basically gambling?

[EForEndeavour]

Seeing it that way makes budgeting for it a lot easier (for me): I fully expect the loss of any and all money I'd bring into a casino, treating it as an admittance fee paid in exchange for the thrill of the tiny possibility of winning big, whose occurrence would probably influence me to double down and inevitably lose everything.

I hope thinking this way about retail investing reduces the risk of YOLOing one's life savings on individual stocks.

[mikestew]

even people who bought in yesterday are up almost 2x.

Not anymore, they're not. Such are equities when the price becomes detached from reality. Any moorings one wishes to try and tie the price to, those are gone now.

As they say, past performance is not an indicator of future gains.