this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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Reminds me of the time I started learning about forex. I used a practice account to test an algorithm for recognizing short-term trends and trading on the activity. I ran a simulation for a few days to make sure it was working, and my fake $10,000 bankroll turned into $50,000 in less than a week. I was excited about the results, and went to explain it to someone with deeper pockets who might actually have $10k to invest, and in the time it took me to walk from my desk to his and back, it went to less than $600. Five minutes, $50k wiped out.
Needless to say, he didn't invest and I stopped daydreaming about owning a yacht. Forex is gambling.
Dang, that would have hurt with real money.
I always stick to mutual funds and ETFs. The few individual stocks I've picked on my own have always lost money. I lost $750 to Beyond Meat, and a couple thousand with BitCoin Cash (should have held it for another year, but hindsight etc.). My mutual fund picks have all gone up. Some more than others, but none have lost me money.
It hurt with fake money, because I thought I had discovered some big secret key. Like that movie Pi. And then it was gone. All the sucess, all the dreams of a 9-screen batcave-style computer station with financial tickers and shit. I realized that I had nothing, and I was foolish for thinking otherwise. Stung like a bitch.
But you're right, safe investments are the smarter long-term play. I did make an extra paycheck on dogecoin once on a moonshot. But otherwise, my boring retirement funds are all steadily beating inflation by a few percentage points. Why fight the tide?
The thing to remember about investing (forex or otherwise) is that it's an enormous global industry. One of the largest and richest there is. If you're a normal person, with a normal day job, tinkering around in the evening trying to pick stocks or write algorithms, just remember that there are countless thousands of professional, experienced, trained analysts all over the world doing the exact same thing 40 hours a week, week in week out.
There are no easy bucks to be made. If it was easy, it'd already be done.
Legally. There's plenty of easy bucks to be made if you lack morals, ethics and doesn't care about the law. Scammers and religious figures come to mind.