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If you fuck up a computer, short of messing with BIOS voltage configurations, you can reset at no cost. It's near costless to make mistakes most of the time.

With finance, high voltage electronics, and explosive chemistry, you can have very high cost consequences if you screw up. And people often delude themselves in finance.

There is a also a return aspect in finance. You need a large amount of starting capital until 80hrs/wk of work will outpace what you make 80hrs/wk in your job.

For example, lets say you make $250k/yr as a smart engineer. We assume best case scenarios and say you make %10/APR (very generous) over the index fund return. You would need $2.5million in starting capital before you can start matching your working self in returns. Most people don't have $2.5 million lying around. You would get better returns starting a business or investing in yourself and leaving your savings into index funds.




Once again I'm not asking for someone to explain the pros and cons of investing. Why do you insist on answering a different question?

Maybe I don't want to invest but simply want to understand how math is used to make trades without human decision making involved once the algorithms are written.




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