# Asymmetric Investments?



## ??? (Mar 15, 2020)

Part 1.

What sort of investments have potential upsides or payoffs that are an order of magnitude or more larger than their potential downsides?

Note that I'm not looking for something consistent. I can afford to lose a bit of money for a long time if there is a rare non-zero chance of a massive payoff.

What should I research/read to learn more about those investments? 

Yes, I did read Antifragile. He recommends options. What are those?

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Part 2.

On the other hand, what investments have zero chance of ever losing value, regardless of what they gain in value?


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## Arctic Fox (Mar 15, 2020)

Invest in cemetaries, and water. Both are needed, both will remain.


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## Marco Fucko (Mar 15, 2020)

What you're talking about is gambling. Go invest in some start ups or hit The Strip to bet on sports or play craps.


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## Save Goober (Mar 15, 2020)

R/wallstreetbets is what you want. Pretty much all they do is buying options on Robinhood, which can have several 100% pay off or more, with the risk is that you lose what you invest. It is gambling.
Very simply, an option is a contract giving you the right but not the obligation to buy or sell 100 shares of a stock at a certain price at a later date. Buying a call option means you think the stock goes up. Buying a put option means you think it will go down.
What they do is mostly buying puts and calls. NOT selling them, that's different and you can lose more money.
You do not have to exercise options, which means actually buying or selling the 100 shares later. They just buy the contacts and then resell the contacts later if the stock goes the direction they think.


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## ??? (Mar 16, 2020)

melty said:


> R/wallstreetbets is what you want. Pretty much all they do is buying options on Robinhood, which can have several 100% pay off or more, with the risk is that you lose what you invest. It is gambling.
> Very simply, an option is a contract giving you the right but not the obligation to buy or sell 100 shares of a stock at a certain price at a later date. Buying a call option means you think the stock goes up. Buying a put option means you think it will go down.
> What they do is mostly buying puts and calls. NOT selling them, that's different and you can lose more money.
> You do not have to exercise options, which means actually buying or selling the 100 shares later. They just buy the contacts and then resell the contacts later if the stock goes the direction they think.


Do you know of a decent textbook on options?


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## Save Goober (Mar 16, 2020)

??? said:


> Do you know of a decent textbook on options?


I read "Understanding Options" by Michael Sincere, and looked up some concepts online if I didn't really get them. Then I started trading them, which gave me a much better understanding.
I really like options. It enables me to make a bet on the direction I think things are going with potentially very good returns, more than stocks. There are also more reasonable strategies with them that are covered in the book.
I actually started reading Black Swan before this shit started; im planning to check out Antifragile if it's good?


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## ??? (Mar 16, 2020)

@melty it's pretty good, but Taleb's crankery starts to shine through there as he basically claims to have invented hormesis. It's a good ideas to read Captain Barf's rebuttals of Taleb on Twitter and his (Barf) blog, but it's mostly concerning IQ slapfights.


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## Bagronkleton (Mar 16, 2020)

Goes without saying but choose an industry to focus on and study the shit out of it. 

-supply chains, are they worth investing in too? Are the supply chains reliable in relation to the stocks/options of interest? 
-make it a habit to read news on those industries on the regular. Social media presence, volatility, so on. 
-get a good reading on your own personal risk tolerance as there is *no guarantees at all* with options and stocks. The only guarantee is that if you're going in blind or making ill informed decisions you *will* lose your money. Stupider decisions will land you in really hot water (see: guh) Might as well play slots at that point, the end result will be the same and generally safer. 

Look up stock market simulation tools. They typically use data based on past market activity and let you make all sorts of gambles, strategies, and what it without risk of losing actual money. I'd suggest using those first to get your feet wet. 

Again to stress the point: there are no zero risks in stock, if that's a concern then stocks won't be for you.


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## thejackal (May 11, 2020)

melty said:


> I read "Understanding Options" by Michael Sincere, and looked up some concepts online if I didn't really get them. Then I started trading them, which gave me a much better understanding.
> I really like options. It enables me to make a bet on the direction I think things are going with potentially very good returns, more than stocks. There are also more reasonable strategies with them that are covered in the book.
> I actually started reading Black Swan before this shit started; im planning to check out Antifragile if it's good?



Personally I thought Black Swan was better than Antifragile, or at least more interesting.  The latter just kinda goes over how Nassim would build things based on the concepts in Black Swan and Fooled By Randomness.

I recently started trading options and I'm absolutely enthralled.  Allows you to take positions both long and short that you feel strongly about and also profit on volatility.


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## Pepsi-Cola (May 23, 2020)

The truth is there is no such thing as investments that can reliably give you quick, substantial returns. I think the bitcoin craze put this idea in everybody's heads that if you read a couple books about the stock market you can become the next wolf of wallstreet in a year.

Let's take Netflix for example. If you invested a ton of money in Netflix stock 10-15 years ago, you'd be a millionaire now. But the key here is 10-15 years. That's realistically the MINIMUM amount of time you would need for a big return like that.

Serious advice: always be on the lookout for the next big thing. Contrary to popular belief, stuff like Bitcoin isn't a once in a life time occurrence. Ask literally anyone who flipped a house in the early 2000s. Or people who are making millions now on dropshipping. You can make serious money in a short amount of time if you know what to look for and you get lucky I guess.


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