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Define "f***ing idiot" and I might even agree with you for a suitable definition (although I'm probably giving you too much credit, and should consider your post an emotional epileptic fit.) However, "there can little hope" is not a sentence in the English language.

The sign of the expectation of a bet is one way to look at it, but I don't think it's the common view. I play irrefutably positive expectation poker and I'll be damned if I can convince even a few people that it's not gambling. Keeping it in quantitative terms but trying to match that up to...

PhD, applied math. Numerics for partial differential equations. Applications in computational physics. Yeah, I think we're on the same page. You're a breath of fresh air in this thread. Thanks for putting up with my naivete.

I would agree on the whole, as I just wrote. I'd add that the original post was about how laypeople perceive what traders do (and the implications for telling people that's what you do), so there may be some value-added here in how to express oneself to a layperson to allay their...

I think we crossed in recent posts (you'll see I said basically the same in my last post): I agree with the risk transferrance interpretation of value creation and accept that as a valid refutation of the "zero sum can't be productive" viewpoint. However, your next sentence is a...

If this is a display of the critical thinking skills of the average trader, I like my odds in this game. I've never been burned in any market nor am I mentally handicapped. I have an advanced degree from an Ivy in a quantitative subject. Also, I get called an idiot, a moron, and worse...

Compared to what? People have been getting hit with 6% or more commissions in real estate forever, and yet the real estate market seems to continue functioning. 1% transaction cost is a bargain, depending on your comparison point.

I'm not trolling. If someone can specifically refute something I've said, please do so. I'm no expert on markets and I could be wrong in the way I'm viewing them as basically a big poker game. But you aren't going to convince me of that by putting up a bunch of goofy smilies.

The general public typically buys and holds, or trades infrequently enough that they don't particularly need liquidity nor low commissions. If you take the conventional wisdom of the day, the public should be buying and holding an index for decades. Trading facilitates other traders, just...

I notice that those who want to dismiss with a smiley have nothing substantive to say.

Name one. Seriously. Maybe there's one I don't know about.

You can't escape zero-sum no matter how you shuffle the money around in a market, nor who's it is, nor who is doing the trading. There's nothing circular about that. That's like saying if someone stakes me and I win them money in the poker game, I am providing them with a service. Sure, and...

Very interesting assumptions you are making. I say market trading is the selfish pursuit of wealth transfer with a zero-sum outcome and you make the assertion that I have "some kind of revulsion to the markets." It simply doesn't follow. I don't. Read on. The vast majority of the...

Agree with your first assertion. Also agree that people work to make money. However, you guys are pretty funny in the way you (collectively, not necessarily you) dismiss out hand the notion that anyone looks to get something more than money out of their work. You can tell a lot about people...

No, that's your assumption. What I don't have is some fantasy that trading is something other than a purely selfish pursuit to take money from others' pockets and put it in my own. Nor do I have any illusions that that is the core reason why people often receive it poorly. It's quite...

The clear implication is that they are comparable, i.e., the "junk" of capitalism that we could do without.

You aren't helping the respectability of the practice of trading markets with comments like this.

I have the background, and would not be bored with the details, to the contrary. Can you point in right direction? PM me if you'd rather.

No, I am coloring the definition with the common bias. This thread is about people's reactions to telling them you're a trader. I am offering what I believe to be some of the reasons why they may react negatively. It really has little to do with what my biases are. So called "valid...

Low variance.