i had a job during the summer of 1981 on wall street. i was a temp. I recall counting bond coupons people sent in for payment.
those were real little piece of paper. they at least felt like something tangible, real world. they were printed on nice paper and looked kinda like money. i had to be bonded. I didn’t steal any, didn’t even think of it. i was proud and pleased to be handling items of high value. I remember the bank was very old school, fancy, looked like soemthing from the 1930s. I think it was chase manhattan.. i have no idea why they let me do that. i was very young.
now I barely get statements for my accounts.
numbers flit across the computer screen. what the hell is it, where is it. brokerages don’t even have it, it’s on some central repository Book of All Monies somewhere, only G-d knows, i suppose. it’s out there though.
and it is real, of course, i mean, it’s real, since we all believe in it and accept it.
but it can be kind of creepy…like we are living in some kind of mass delusion.
these “stocks”, they are traded millions of times a second by wall streets robots bidding against one another, algorithms. they are bizarre signifiers of what?
if you start to think about this shit too much, you could get really weirded out. is there really something underlying those stock prices that is anything near what the price is?
does that even matter?
are stocks more like works of fine art, worth something for the value we impart to them, much more than the mere paint and canvas? are we really buying a share of a moneymaking business, or just a bet on what everyone thinks everyone else thinks someone might pay for it, like litecoin?
I mean, I put my money in them, but I do not believe in them. it feels a little like the matrix
I believe they have some value, but it is impossible to tell what that is now, let alone 20 years from now.
here’s a thought experiment: what if there were no historical data on the stock market. let’s say every single stock being traded were an IPO today; full, accurate disclosure of everything in the business…
do you think the stock price would be higher,lower or the same as today?
maybe the excitement of the IPO woould drive the prices even higher…but
to me, it’s pretty clear the price would be a hell of a lot lower, since we are willing to pay a premium for historical performance, like it means something for the future. that’s what we look at when we go to invest.
but past returns do not predict future returns, its on every prospectus. so….
people who think about shit too much tend to have worse returns, i think.
my wife’s accounts always outperform mine.
i believe the correct course of action is to give your money to a robot and obey our robot kings.
