Down goes the Dow

No, it’s not a giant win. It’s literally a 50-50 chance. The odds are not against him.

Yeah nah. The market goes up something like 2/3 of years. The odds are not 50/50 in the stock market - the odds are biased toward winning. Picking a winning short position means you have beaten the odds. Igy did that.

What’s wrong, can’t handle the truth?

Or just having a bad day?

😹

Best day in a bit for me.

Nearly even on the week.

Meta/Facebook down another 12% after hours.

That one is down around 18% since its highs...yesterday. Ouch.

The company should just say it may not be a going concern, to get expectations low enough.

But no one cares about FB...SP500 is up a fraction after hours.

GDP number tomorrow...it's getting close to whether the market wants a faster economy or a slower economy. GDP Now thinks we'll come in at +3.1%. But many think a recession is inevitable in the 1Q, so things must be slowing down rapidly.

The economy has not really rolled over yet. A long way to travel on this new environment road of market pricing the true cost of capital.

But that’s not how probability works. We’ve all heard the phrase, “past performance is not a guarantee of future results.” In other words, history has nothing to do with it. If you flip a fair coin five times and each one comes up heads, the odds that the next flip will be heads is still 1:2. Each flip is independent of the others and each day/week/month/year in the market is too.

I can handle the truth just fine, thank you. You’re the one who is in near constant denial.

As for my day, my portfolio was pretty flat. Not bad, not good. But then I don’t get my undies all in a bunch over a single day like some people here.

doesnt' that only work when there is a true 50/50 probability of something happening?

Seems to me that the odds are not equal in terms of the stock market. Every flip has something like a 67% chance of coming up heads, not a 50% chance.

Although I am terrible at math theory so I'm not digging in my heels on this.

It depends.

Coin flip -- what happened before has no impact on the result of the next flip.

Cards turned without replacement. Previous cards do affect later outcomes.

50/50 not a factor.

Here's an interesting read about averages in terms of both length of a bear market and how far it dropped from peak to the bottom.

A snippet: " As you can see from the table, the average bear market since 1929 has resulted in a roughly 37 percent decline in the S&P 500 and it has taken an average of 344 days, or nearly a year, for the market to reach its bear market bottom.
If these averages were to play out during the current bear market, investors could expect the S&P 500 to fall to about 3,017, or a roughly 22 percent decline from mid-July 2022 (note: when articles was written) levels. The average duration from peak to trough would mean the market could bottom in mid-December 2022, based on its peak of January 3, 2022."

bankrate.com

The S&P 500 Is In A Bear Market: How Much Lower Could It Go? | Bankrate

Brian Baker

The S&P 500 has fallen into a bear market as investors focus on a number of economic risks. Here's what past bear markets tell us about how long this one might last.

Link:www.bankrate.com/investing/how-long-wi...

Don't think this is a typical bear market.

More like 2008 -- or worse

There are external factors that affect the stock market (and arguably a coin flip). But the effect of those external factors is unknown to us despite what some think. If we honestly knew how those external factors would affect the markets on any given day, we would all be multi-millionaires. But we are not because we don’t. The result is that the daily/weekly/monthly/yearly movements of the markets resemble a coin flip…sometimes up, sometimes down. Your guess is as good as mine.

Current coin flips mean investors will continue to lose more money:

thefelderreport.com

The Trouble For Big Tech Stocks In Two Charts, Part Deux

jessefelder

Obscene valuations were only made possible by massive money printing which has now been shifted into reverse.

Link:thefelderreport.com/2022/10/26/the-tro...

For sake of the argument, let's assume that the chances for the stock market to go up in any given year is akin to a coin toss, and essentially a 50% chance it will go up and a 50% chance it would go down. That is what a coin toss metaphor means, right?

If that were the case, who in their right mind would invest in it? Seriously, why would anyone put their money at risk if it was just as likely to lose money as it was to gain money? What is the incentive to tie up the capital?

Only a raging idiot would do that.

People invest in the stock market because, based on historical averages, they have a much better chance to profit than to lose. That's why people invest in the market and don't invest in, say, beanie babies.