How does stock trading work?

elementalist

This is better advice than I was expecting from the previous responses.

I would add: learn about risk management. It is absolutely critical and usually completely ignored by newbies.

And: emotion, it's got no place in trading. If you can't pull the plug when you are down you are guaranteed to be a failure at trading. Develop your plan. Test your plan. Stick with your plan. And tell your lizard brain to shut the fuck up.

elementalist

In my state unemployment is rarely more than 1/3 of what take home pay was on the job and no taxes are taken out. It can be quite a shock for some people when that reality rolls around in the new year.

No doubt many people take the first couple of weeks to lick their ego from getting laid off and maybe enjoy an unplanned vacation. But beyond that unemployment is not a great lifestyle.

On your second point, it's more than just being willing to accept a lower wage, the new wage still has to support existing expenses, even after people jettison any luxuries. Even in the best of times it is not easy to sell your house, uproot your family from their school and friends. In a real estate market where 1/4 of the people's mortgages are underwater it is actually a losing proposition. And people in general lose because the short sale lowers the neighborhood values, etc., and the whole deflationary cycle kicks in for another whirl.

In truth many people who should be planning bankruptcy are scratching to hold on because in a ridiculously competitive job market having the bankruptcy on their record is the complete kiss of death with many employers.

The creative ways we find to kick people when they are already down is amazing.

elementalist

For Christ's sake, for the third time: Exactly how much health care and retirement do you think the Chinese are exporting? ZERO. How much can they export? ZERO. There are industries that are currency sensitive and there are those that are nearly immune. These are in the latter category.

They are transfer of wealth from one group to another.

Got it now. You are just an ideological moron, not an economist.

elementalist

The exchange rate is fine if you are buying goods or services from the country who your currency rises against. Dollar rises against the Euro - great time to take a vacation in Europe. Rises against the yen - great, cheaper electronics. In neither case does your health care or retirement costs diminish - unless you are planning on living outside the country.

It is not a question of whether the Chinese could buy more with a stronger currency but whether they would buy more if the main drivers of their saving rate are not addressed. The exchange rate is not one of those drivers.

And SS and medicare are not welfare. They are insurance funds, regardless of how the government abuses them.

elementalist

Maybe.

China does not have anything like social security and medicare. That high savings rate is mostly squirreled away for old age. In the absence of similar programs developing there you shouldn't be too confident that the average person is going to go on a buying spree just because of currency valuations.

elementalist

Well said.

elementalist

We? Who's we? "We" get to die in Humvees and bankrupt the country paying to make places safe for corporations who will then turn around and gouge us.

elementalist

Kudlow is still on the air? Geez.

elementalist

This is beyond stupid.

An economy that added all of 43k jobs last month abandons 1.3 million (quickly to grow to 2 million) people just barely hanging on. Throw on top of that no relief for the states, meaning several hundred thousand more layoffs. Consider the likelihood of mortgage defaults among this group on a housing and banking industry that is itself in precarious shape. People who have jobs and are already scared go into shitless paralysis and spend even less.

If you aren't short every possible vehicle you are truly an optimist.

elementalist

It matters quite a lot when the average worker gets hit in the face with the inflation every day but GDP growth is largely irrelevant to his life.

The US had GDP growth, though far more modest than China, for most of the last ten years. Yet job creation and worker income was effectively flat.

elementalist

Yo China, grow up. You wanted to run with the big dogs. It takes more than synchronized Olympics acts and that World's Fair thing you got going on currently.

The world carried you for 30 years and you knew this day was coming. The training wheels are coming off. Stop screaming like a little girl.

elementalist

I think there was comment on today's TWIT to the effect that 36 companies are showing Android tablets at some upcoming trade show.

elementalist

You nailed this so perfectly I wish I could give you a prize.

I would only add the obligatory package manager discussion. "XXX does exactly what the last version does but the new GUI is better/worse..."

elementalist

Why is perfection not something that a person would want?

I would ask people to consider, even if it was possible, what it would be like to live with someone who was perfect. Unless you are also perfect it is bound to be an uncomfortable situation.

More seriously, it is fine to shoot for always bettering yourself and your relationships. But part of being an adult is coming to grips with the reality that you aren't ever going to be perfect, that as you get older and more tired and pressured by life that expectation is going to slip way beyond anyone's grasp. People should do the best they can. It's unrealistic to ask more of them.

elementalist

Oh no. She's female. She "deserves" it. Everyone tells her so.

elementalist

That's probably a good thing. It's like trying to understand why people quit high school. Even if you understand the reasons the odds are so stacked against them it's still a bad decision.

elementalist

Like what you see at the beginning. We are not finished products but neither are we lumps of clay. You may influence us around the edges but you are not going to fundamentally change us. The few guys that let you try, you will come to hate; and they you.

We are not your "everything". We won't "complete" you. We will hopefully share more together than with other people but you will have interests and needs that we can't or have no interest in fulfilling.

Embrace the differences. We are not female so don't expect us to be. That is why you have girl friends.

elementalist

Where do you go to trade karma for goods and services?

elementalist

Want to start one?

What did you have in mind?

elementalist

No.

This kind of thing probably had more to do with it.

elementalist

Snore. That show is so crappy they will do anything to generate publicity.

elementalist

She is having an affair because people saw them, in a public place, eating chips and salsa. Great journalism.

elementalist

Probation, assigned to community service as bike safety inspector.

elementalist

"It's different this time."

elementalist

This is 1940. One would imagine those kids looked much less robust 2 or 3 years later.

elementalist

TROPHY CASE

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