Why don't we extend this to the risky public manipulated stock market?

tptacek 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because the odds of you losing all your money on private tech company shares are nearly 100%, and the odds of you losing all your money in SPDR or VFINX are nearly 0%.

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skinnymuch 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Still seems silly when meme stocks exist and the establishment (like entire media and news apparatus) can and do collude to mess with things (like “Black Monday” ~2021 when all the media and news lied and said wall street bets and meme stonk people had moved on to silver) and within days all the meme stock gains across over a dozen companies were entirely wiped out.

Not saying meme stocks should be a thing but no one gets investigated or in trouble. Nothing is done. If they cared about the average person something would be done.

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tptacek 19 hours ago | parent [-]

When people investigate meme stocks the people complaining that they can't get on Stripe's cap table take the side of the meme stocks!

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colesantiago 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Why do you think that is?

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tptacek 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Because they watched a small group of people win a roulette straight bet when the ball landed on 32 and now think federal action is needed to allow everybody to bet straight 32 on everything.

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colesantiago 18 hours ago | parent [-]

There is no other way for that group of retail investors to build wealth other than go into these highly and extremely risky assets that you and I hate and do not recommend. (even more risky than secondary markets)

Sure, they can invest in public companies but if lots of these high growth companies stay private, the gains will not be shared towards retail especially for their pensions.

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tptacek 16 hours ago | parent [-]

This is obviously not true. Most wealthy people do not build their wealth by gambling on meme stocks and tech companies. That's an extraordinarily Twitter-blinkered thing to believe.

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colesantiago 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> This is obviously not true. Most wealthy people do not build their wealth by gambling on meme stocks and tech companies. That's an extraordinarily Twitter-blinkered thing to believe.

I never said wealthy, I said "retail investors", and most retail investors are not wealthy. Maybe you've been reading off Twitter and got that mixed up.

Your words not mine, but I'll just say the wealthy have more options than retail.

Shame, because I know some smart people who want to invest in the same companies as me and cannot and have to wait until it goes public for a that chance (if that ever comes)

Now with most growth companies staying private these people won't get a stake in the future and obviously you're fine with that.

I wonder if you would think it would be fine (if not great) if Google, Apple and other companies would just stay private in another universe.

	▲	tptacek 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You said "there is no other way for that group of retail investors to build wealth other than go into these highly and extremely risky assets". Obviously, no, that's not true.

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paxys 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because that is what the SEC was created for, and (in theory) it is their job to protect regular invesors from market risks. Now how effectively that works is a different conversation, but at the very least you have reporting requirements, earnings releases, material disclosures, insider trading laws, SIPC insurance, circuit breakers etc. It is very unlikely that you are going to lose all your money in a stable blue chip company or broad index fund, but a regular joe trying to invest in a hot "private investing opportunity" is absolutely going to be taken for a ride.