1) if it were a 50%-50% case there would be no shorting at all. the probabilities are always on the shorter's side.
2) even if it were a 50%-50% probability it still is gambling, which like i said in the first post, shouldn't be what stock markets are about.
if I, the stockholder THINK that long term prices are going up but short-term they are going down, I still have no reason to lend my stocks to a glossy yappie. I can just sell the stocks now and buy them back when they hit bottom thus making all the profit for myself.
straw man, it's not about iq, but mostly about better understanding and info on the market, about manipulation and defrauding: a lot of shorters could agree to short a certain stock and in a matter of week that stock will hit the bottom.
if he thinks the stocks will go down and decides to sell them, he can just do it by himself: Plus, selling his stocks for 10k dollars today is way better than having 8k dollars in stocks tommorrow + a 200dollar fee.
you just described how a fund manager becomes an accomplice to a crime: sure he will make money for himself and lose money for the his customers when he instead should be making money for his customers. "oops sorry, didn't know the prices were going to go down". right.
please don't pretend to be a moron. if my stocks before the shorting were worth 10k dollars and after your shorting 8k dollars, and i got your fancy fee of 200 dollars then i'm screwed. only a person who doesn't know elementary school arithmetic would reason:
x stocks before x stocks after + fee without thinking that the x stocks after may and will actually be worth less.
i'm not grasping at straws, just making more evident the case by drama-tizing it.
he would never agree if he knew the prices were really going to go down. you'd never do it if you knew the prices will go up:)
like i said 3 times already, yes he has his stocks back, PLUS an X fee, MINUS the Y lost value. and usually ( meaning most of the times ) Y-X>0 so he is poorer now because you convinced him to lend you his stocks.
if you had read my comments in the thread with h4rr4r you'd see the stockholder is actually losing money because the next day his stocks will be the same number of stocks but at a lower total value. trying to make yourself richer by not presenting the whole story to the other party and getting from him money for giving back NOTHING in return is the definition of the FRAUD.
not true. it's the seller who is trying to take advantage of the soon-to-be-convinced-loaner, because it's the seller who begs him to lend him his stocks.
bad analogy. in the shorting scenario, you are making the guy become poorer. in the second scenario he will not become poorer he will be richer ( provided he bought the stock at an initially lower price that you are offering to buy now ). Plus what you are describing is the normal operation of the stock market. If you really want to buy stocks because you *know* the price will go up, there it is you can just do it in the stock market.
See, your whole logic is based on fraud. In the fact that the other person does not what is going on. "he has to believe.." right, a fraud right from that sentence.
because shorting may and will affect the long term price of the stock. example: due to shorting the price of a healthy company may go that much down that it will make the company go bankrupt.
only that the guy who borrows the stocks is not the average dumb person who lends the stocks. it's not a 50-50 probability. The probabilities are on the shorter's side which make this whole "game" cooked. Not only that but the shorter has vested interests in making the price of the stock lower and will actively pursue it ( which is a crime in itself ).
on the other hand, your argument misleading and invalid because if the stock really went up, the lending person would still make money whether he lent his stocks or not:)
oh really? none hides that fact, except that nobody tells it either. and not everyone who owns shares knows what shorting is. Not telling the whole truth equals telling a lie. you are making him believe he will be richer when in fact he will be POORER by tomorrow and the only person to become richer is you, who just stole 1.600 of his money. What you ( the shorter ) omit to say is that you want to become richer by making him poorer. Don't pretend to be dumb.
it's easier because it's harder to "add" value to company than "remove" it, for people are not buying anymore in rumors of the old days "look buy that stock it will be higher tomorrow". they already learned that lesson the hard way ( stock market bubbles ).
if only the analogy of drop shipping was well..analogous.
manipulating stocks to go down is way easier than making them go up.
Plus, like i said it's a pure fraud: so you tell me that if i lend you my 1000 shares ( worth 10.000 usd today ) you will give me back that exact number of shares tomorrow plus 200 usd. What you omit to say is that the value of those 1000 shares i will get back tomorrow will be 8.000 usd, which makes you a fraudster and thus a thief.
shorting should be banned for a couple of reasons. first of all because you don't own the stock that you are trading. secondly because it leads to manipulations ( people not just predicting that the stock will drop but having interest in that stock dropping and thus acting through various means towards that end ). Which brings us to the third reason: it's just a fraud. the only person who gains from shorting is the guy doing it not the actual stockholder, the stockholder loses money.
stock market should not be about what you said: speculation. it should be about long term investments, that way, speculators, adventurers and all sort of thieves will go way.
once or twice per day is more than enough.
the way stock markets are now, is simply a distortion of its purpose.
p.s. shorting should be outright banned too.
most people would enjoy the kind of activities he is doing, even if they are designed to appeal to the average russian to give a rise to his. I suppose you'd prefer a russia led by a yeltsin-like drunkard very easily manipulated and a russia in a state of a bordello where everyone has his ways with it.
I also suppose that you have a degree in psychology.
sure the things you mention he has done are mostly true. So? People there are tough, a country like russia cannot be ruled with our western idealistic democracy, IF you want to have a sovereign country.
last but not least, putting 2 girls in jail, killing a defecting agent (which every self respecting secret agency would do to set an example ) etc etc are not as much of a damage as let's say the dead iraqis, afghanis etc. etc.
Religions are just a source of philosophy for people without the time or inclination to ponder all of life's questions themselves. If you have the time to read over the works of philosophers and come up with a consistent viewpoint, more power to you. Most people don't, and those people can therefore either live without any self-consistent views on morality, or they can adopt a ready-made set in the form of a religion.
Consistent morality is important. Without it, people will just come up with a rationalization for whatever benefits them at this moment, with no regard for the long term implications. That path gets you state-endorsed torture, it gets you anti-death penalty people supporting drone strikes and assassinations, it gets you anti-homosexual pundits demonizing people when the very same Biblical verse against homosexuality also lists publicly denouncing someone as equally sinful, and so on.
But hey, religious people are behind all of those examples! Yeah, that was on purpose. Did you notice how as soon as a "Christian" leader decided torture was okay, all his supporters went along with it? It's because they aren't truly religious, they just like belonging to a special club. They don't actually care about the morality aspect. I don't want to specifically pick on Christians either. The Muslim suicide bombers and their leaders are in the same camp. They don't actually care about the faith, they just care about their special club -- the leaders like the power, the followers like the sense of purpose. Take away the religion, and they'll just come up with something else to rally behind... maybe race, maybe economic policy, maybe whether they eat their bread butter side up or down. Atheism doesn't solve anything. What we need is people to care more about finding a consistent moral basis.
Now, of course, organized religion is a problem, particularly when accepted without question. Any time that you accept a ready-made philosophy from a powerful organization, you have to assume that the organization has designed that philosophy to protect its interests. For example, contrast the core tenets of Judeo-Christian religions (don't kill, don't steal, etc.) with some of the lesser points (e.g. tithing). It's pretty clear that certain ideas are important, while others are just there so that some old men in Rome can live comfortably.
In short, what people should do, for the good of all humanity, is learn the good lessons, throw away the bad ones, and stop treating it as a team sport. This goes for atheists too. There have been great philosophers who didn't believe in a God, but people like Dawkins just make things worse by making everything so damn confrontational. Instead of providing readers with a consistent moral viewpoint, he just strokes their egos and gets rich doing it. No different from the priest who tells his flock their God's chosen people right before passing the hat.
The whole post is an apology for religion. Of course if we go deep down it's the human nature that it's bad, but religion enhances that aspect of it.
About dawkins and him being confrontational, there is no progress with being carebears. Maybe we should heal the horde to their death ? Or - and i want to bring godwin here - should we have become friends with the nazis ? The only way to fix cancer is to remove it, that is, being confrontational with it.
>Your comment reveals your still a youth as more senior slashdotters are well aware of the long term effects of gravity on the female breast, they are not so perky any more.
There have been several studies that suggested the opposite. The theory being that since Breasts contain almost no muscle, what holds them up is the ligaments in the chest. The bra moves the pressure to the shoulder muscles, which makes those ligaments weaken - so in fact wearing bras INCREASE sagging.
I guess that's why african women who never wear bras have their breasts almost touching their vaginas.
Slashdot Mirror
person A trying to sell product X, says all other products are inferior to his product
one thing is sure. this tarek mehanna didn't learn 1 single thing in his history classes.
1) if it were a 50%-50% case there would be no shorting at all. the probabilities are always on the shorter's side. 2) even if it were a 50%-50% probability it still is gambling, which like i said in the first post, shouldn't be what stock markets are about.
if I, the stockholder THINK that long term prices are going up but short-term they are going down, I still have no reason to lend my stocks to a glossy yappie. I can just sell the stocks now and buy them back when they hit bottom thus making all the profit for myself.
straw man, it's not about iq, but mostly about better understanding and info on the market, about manipulation and defrauding: a lot of shorters could agree to short a certain stock and in a matter of week that stock will hit the bottom.
if he thinks the stocks will go down and decides to sell them, he can just do it by himself: Plus, selling his stocks for 10k dollars today is way better than having 8k dollars in stocks tommorrow + a 200dollar fee. you just described how a fund manager becomes an accomplice to a crime: sure he will make money for himself and lose money for the his customers when he instead should be making money for his customers. "oops sorry, didn't know the prices were going to go down". right.
please don't pretend to be a moron. if my stocks before the shorting were worth 10k dollars and after your shorting 8k dollars, and i got your fancy fee of 200 dollars then i'm screwed. only a person who doesn't know elementary school arithmetic would reason: x stocks before x stocks after + fee without thinking that the x stocks after may and will actually be worth less.
i'm not grasping at straws, just making more evident the case by drama-tizing it. he would never agree if he knew the prices were really going to go down. you'd never do it if you knew the prices will go up :)
like i said 3 times already, yes he has his stocks back, PLUS an X fee, MINUS the Y lost value. and usually ( meaning most of the times ) Y-X>0 so he is poorer now because you convinced him to lend you his stocks.
if you had read my comments in the thread with h4rr4r you'd see the stockholder is actually losing money because the next day his stocks will be the same number of stocks but at a lower total value. trying to make yourself richer by not presenting the whole story to the other party and getting from him money for giving back NOTHING in return is the definition of the FRAUD.
not true. it's the seller who is trying to take advantage of the soon-to-be-convinced-loaner, because it's the seller who begs him to lend him his stocks.
bad analogy. in the shorting scenario, you are making the guy become poorer. in the second scenario he will not become poorer he will be richer ( provided he bought the stock at an initially lower price that you are offering to buy now ). Plus what you are describing is the normal operation of the stock market. If you really want to buy stocks because you *know* the price will go up, there it is you can just do it in the stock market.
See, your whole logic is based on fraud. In the fact that the other person does not what is going on. "he has to believe.." right, a fraud right from that sentence.
because shorting may and will affect the long term price of the stock. example: due to shorting the price of a healthy company may go that much down that it will make the company go bankrupt.
only that the guy who borrows the stocks is not the average dumb person who lends the stocks. it's not a 50-50 probability. The probabilities are on the shorter's side which make this whole "game" cooked. Not only that but the shorter has vested interests in making the price of the stock lower and will actively pursue it ( which is a crime in itself ).
:)
on the other hand, your argument misleading and invalid because if the stock really went up, the lending person would still make money whether he lent his stocks or not
oh really? none hides that fact, except that nobody tells it either. and not everyone who owns shares knows what shorting is. Not telling the whole truth equals telling a lie. you are making him believe he will be richer when in fact he will be POORER by tomorrow and the only person to become richer is you, who just stole 1.600 of his money. What you ( the shorter ) omit to say is that you want to become richer by making him poorer. Don't pretend to be dumb. it's easier because it's harder to "add" value to company than "remove" it, for people are not buying anymore in rumors of the old days "look buy that stock it will be higher tomorrow". they already learned that lesson the hard way ( stock market bubbles ).
if only the analogy of drop shipping was well..analogous. manipulating stocks to go down is way easier than making them go up. Plus, like i said it's a pure fraud: so you tell me that if i lend you my 1000 shares ( worth 10.000 usd today ) you will give me back that exact number of shares tomorrow plus 200 usd. What you omit to say is that the value of those 1000 shares i will get back tomorrow will be 8.000 usd, which makes you a fraudster and thus a thief.
shorting should be banned for a couple of reasons. first of all because you don't own the stock that you are trading. secondly because it leads to manipulations ( people not just predicting that the stock will drop but having interest in that stock dropping and thus acting through various means towards that end ). Which brings us to the third reason: it's just a fraud. the only person who gains from shorting is the guy doing it not the actual stockholder, the stockholder loses money.
stock market should not be about what you said: speculation. it should be about long term investments, that way, speculators, adventurers and all sort of thieves will go way. once or twice per day is more than enough. the way stock markets are now, is simply a distortion of its purpose. p.s. shorting should be outright banned too.
most people would enjoy the kind of activities he is doing, even if they are designed to appeal to the average russian to give a rise to his. I suppose you'd prefer a russia led by a yeltsin-like drunkard very easily manipulated and a russia in a state of a bordello where everyone has his ways with it. I also suppose that you have a degree in psychology. sure the things you mention he has done are mostly true. So? People there are tough, a country like russia cannot be ruled with our western idealistic democracy, IF you want to have a sovereign country. last but not least, putting 2 girls in jail, killing a defecting agent (which every self respecting secret agency would do to set an example ) etc etc are not as much of a damage as let's say the dead iraqis, afghanis etc. etc.
these days the internet absolutely a new meme, spin off from an old one.
Religions are just a source of philosophy for people without the time or inclination to ponder all of life's questions themselves. If you have the time to read over the works of philosophers and come up with a consistent viewpoint, more power to you. Most people don't, and those people can therefore either live without any self-consistent views on morality, or they can adopt a ready-made set in the form of a religion.
Consistent morality is important. Without it, people will just come up with a rationalization for whatever benefits them at this moment, with no regard for the long term implications. That path gets you state-endorsed torture, it gets you anti-death penalty people supporting drone strikes and assassinations, it gets you anti-homosexual pundits demonizing people when the very same Biblical verse against homosexuality also lists publicly denouncing someone as equally sinful, and so on.
But hey, religious people are behind all of those examples! Yeah, that was on purpose. Did you notice how as soon as a "Christian" leader decided torture was okay, all his supporters went along with it? It's because they aren't truly religious, they just like belonging to a special club. They don't actually care about the morality aspect. I don't want to specifically pick on Christians either. The Muslim suicide bombers and their leaders are in the same camp. They don't actually care about the faith, they just care about their special club -- the leaders like the power, the followers like the sense of purpose. Take away the religion, and they'll just come up with something else to rally behind... maybe race, maybe economic policy, maybe whether they eat their bread butter side up or down. Atheism doesn't solve anything. What we need is people to care more about finding a consistent moral basis.
Now, of course, organized religion is a problem, particularly when accepted without question. Any time that you accept a ready-made philosophy from a powerful organization, you have to assume that the organization has designed that philosophy to protect its interests. For example, contrast the core tenets of Judeo-Christian religions (don't kill, don't steal, etc.) with some of the lesser points (e.g. tithing). It's pretty clear that certain ideas are important, while others are just there so that some old men in Rome can live comfortably.
In short, what people should do, for the good of all humanity, is learn the good lessons, throw away the bad ones, and stop treating it as a team sport. This goes for atheists too. There have been great philosophers who didn't believe in a God, but people like Dawkins just make things worse by making everything so damn confrontational. Instead of providing readers with a consistent moral viewpoint, he just strokes their egos and gets rich doing it. No different from the priest who tells his flock their God's chosen people right before passing the hat.
The whole post is an apology for religion. Of course if we go deep down it's the human nature that it's bad, but religion enhances that aspect of it. About dawkins and him being confrontational, there is no progress with being carebears. Maybe we should heal the horde to their death ? Or - and i want to bring godwin here - should we have become friends with the nazis ? The only way to fix cancer is to remove it, that is, being confrontational with it.
>Your comment reveals your still a youth as more senior slashdotters are well aware of the long term effects of gravity on the female breast, they are not so perky any more.
There have been several studies that suggested the opposite. The theory being that since Breasts contain almost no muscle, what holds them up is the ligaments in the chest. The bra moves the pressure to the shoulder muscles, which makes those ligaments weaken - so in fact wearing bras INCREASE sagging.
I guess that's why african women who never wear bras have their breasts almost touching their vaginas.