WALTER784 said:

Well, if anybody really thinks they won't go under... now is the time to buy their stock!!! I'm not going to do it however.

Or, if one really thinks they are going under, now is the time to short sell their stock.

Down side is, if it takes off again, you could be wiped out by the margin call.

Sort of like how some people banded together to make a bunch of hedge fund types lose a fortune on GameStop by forcing the price to rise when the hedge fund types had a short position on the stock.

LOL...

Yep, stocks are always a gamble.

And just like with any gambling... never bet more than you can afford to lose.

That's why I've always called gambling a game for the rich.

Sadly, however, many poor gamble everything in an attempt to get rich, but end up losing everything, but they go right back and continue doing it over and over and over.

Whether it's stocks, lottery ticket, horses, Jai alai, dogs, casinos or any other gambling sport.

FWIW

The people who gamble the most are those who can least afford to lose.

I'm proud to say I have never bought a lottery ticket, and I've never been to Las Vegas.

In the late 1990s, I once had to pre-pay for gas at a busy convenience store at about 6 AM in Brownfield, TX needing to be in Midland by 8 AM.

In front of me was this lady who bought 200 "scratch and lose" lottery tickets. And held up the line for quite a while as this was being processed. Then she bought a half gallon of milk with food stamps, and drove off, where I could finally fill my gas tank and get on the road.

I also noticed about 4 or 5 "stair step" kids packed into that car.

$1,661.87 in cats (ROCKETMAN_S) said...

The people who gamble the most are those who can least afford to lose.

Yep, that's why they're always broke... but they just don't realize it.

Here in Japan, pachinko parlors are quite famous. Numerous friends of mine are hooked on them. They spend all of their free time at the pachinko parlors.

They all tell me about how they won $300, $500, $1,500 and more.

I then asked many of them (I think 8 or more) to start keeping track of how much they spent vs how much they won over a 3-month period of time. I told them that they probably lose more than they win but none of them wanted to believe me.

After 3 months, they were all surprised... each one actually lost more than they won. I don't remember the actual figures, but one said he won $7,000 but he spent $12,000 to win that $7,000, spent $800 to win $500, etc.! Others were similar, but in smaller amounts.

What I find really strange is that these guys who are hooked on pachinko spend like 5 or 6 hours a day in those pachinko parlors to win just a few hundred dollars. It's probably more than they could make working part-time at another job, but they often loose more times than they win too. So, all the times they lose, they would have actually won more by working part-time elsewhere!

FWIW

Way back when Texas introduced a lottery under Governor Ann Richards, something I used to tell people was - a lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.

Same with other gambling. The odds always favor the house. Thus, the more you gamble, the greater your accumulative losses.

Like someone gambling 12,000 to win 7,000 - that lost $5k would buy a lot of bread and milk and medicine.

Pachinko is fun if you can play for free.

California started a lottery for education.  They never quite said what happened to the money but education was and still is quite broke.

None of them are free here in Japan. Of course, you can buy your own used pachinko machine for about $300 ~ $450 and play it at home all you want, but even that is not free because you have to buy the used machine.

And after you play it enough times, the little nails/pins that the balls go through get slightly bent out of shape and need occasional realignment too!

FWIW

Showtalk said:

California started a lottery for education. They never quite said what happened to the money but education was and still is quite broke.

Yep. Classic bait and switch scam, just done by a state legislature rather than a typical street hustler.

It was a home machine. It didn’t work as well as a professional one. There is a novel called Pachinko, too, by Min Jin Lee.