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Old 02-21-2005, 12:17 AM
RunDownHouse RunDownHouse is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 165
Default Re: Going for the gold

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I asked myself the same question about why I think I can daytrade better then the others. I really think my experience in poker is what sets me apart. I'm sure there are some day traders that are poker players. There hasn't been an explosion in daytrading like there has in poker. So I would assume most daytraders were trading before the poker explosion, therefore meaning they were trading before they ever played poker. Therefore meaning they had no poker skillz to apply to trading.

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So, by that logic, you are going to absolutely suck at day trading. After all, you were a poker player before you traded, so you have no skills at day trading and all you can apply to trading are poker "skillz (sic)!" And saying that there hasn't been a day-trading explosion comparable to poker is ridiculous.
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Crackpot armchair-psychologist example

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Take a step back from this example and think of the event from a wider perspective. In what circumstances is it correct for a company to buy back shares? For that to be a good investment, two conditions must BOTH be met: it has to be a profitable investment, and there must be no better investments available to make.

The only reason for an investor to buy a particular stock is their belief that it will outperform the appropriate index (sort of; I know that's a very basic, deliberately simplified statement). When a company buys back its own stock, it is essentially giving up. It is saying, "We cannot invest this money in any venture which would add more value than the market expects of us at this time." Therefore, they return that capital to shareholders, so that they may reinvest it to gain at least average market returns.

Seen from this view, a company buying back shares is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they are all but admitting that they cannot beat market expectations and therefore increase share price. On the other hand, they are returning capital to shareholders, which is better than sinking that cash into ventures that return less than the index or actually destroy value.

Given this information, the changes in price in your example are not surprising, nor is an understanding of poker bluffs and reads in any way necessary or helpful to understanding them. Guess what? Thousands of investors, if they could be troubled, would analyze that situation much better than you, so I still fail to see how you expect to gain an edge on the market.
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