Re: Bagholders and suckers

january 16, 2022

Idiomdrottning: “Bagholders and suckers”

StackSmith: “Re: Bagholders and suckers”

When I was in late elementary school or early middle school (10–12 years old for non-Americans) I played this thing called the Stock Market Experience; apparently it's only in Colorado so I doubt most people have heard of it. It's a stock market simulator where you compete with other teams to make the most money by, just trading, like a real stock market. In case you needed proof of Idiomdrottning's point about “investors”/gamblers benefiting at the expense of others it's literally a game-like competition.

One could argue it's “capitalist propaganda” aimed at young children or some dumb argument—and maybe it was intended to be that—but it was just fun (it's trivial and low-stakes when you're not using real money). To me it was no different than—and teaching me no more real-life skills than—playing Trade Wars 2002. But the point I'm making is, I won that shit! The fact that a ten-year-old won a stock market competition against older and theoretically more skillful middle schoolers (13–14 years old) should be abundant proof that the stock market is just gambling. All you're doing is just dumping money into shit and if you're lucky you'll make more back. Maybe there's some applicable skills to increase your chances, maybe you can learn the trends for how other people invest and change your strategy accordingly; but in the end you're still slightly increasing the chances you “win,” no different than counting cards at a casino.

The Stock Market Experience was really fun to play though, and I got to go to an awards ceremony at the Denver Zoo and also got to be on the local TV news. If I'm being completely honest I more vividly remember getting to see the cheetahs on that trip to the zoo than I remember the actual awards ceremony though :P. The cheetah enclosure was right across from the building they were using for the ceremony and my parents had to drag me away to get to the ceremony on time.

Twelve-to-eighteen–year-old me in the 2010s, playing Trade Wars 2002 (circa 1986) on a BBS (BBSes largely dead since 1996)

I've always been drawn to liking big cats, bats, and birds of prey (my three favorite types of animals) for as long as I can remember. In like second grade I remember having to make a presentation on an animal of our choosing, and after wandering through the school library's nonfiction section I was really interested in some species of flying fox despite never really being exposed to anything bat-related before; I aced that assignment as hard as a second-grader can ace an assignment. Also I just looked, my first e621 favorite was a bat and my third was a cheetah so no surprises there. I'm sure glad I wrote a full paragraph on this in a random link in the footer of a post whose content is completely unrelated to this tangent.