I think a lot of short term investing is about capitalizing on variance whereas long term investing is about steady returns over time.

Otherwise, you should just put the money in a bank and keep it safe.

Thanks for the clarification. Ive never gone through an audit fwiw. Some of my coworkers have. The one that comes to mind is someone who trades stocks and the IRS challenged his cost basis amount. From how he describes it, the IRS lost his return twice - he also didnt have a copy so he had to do it again.

You can't expect poker players as a whole, many of whom are degenerate gamblers, to be making smart financial decisions all the time.

Only if you don't know what you're doing.

Please explain.

If I have a short term horizon and I'm interested in investing, then I would pick a 5% return with a larger variance over a 5% return with a smaller variance. But if I have a long horizon, I would prefer the smaller variance for a more predictable long-term projection to work with.

If your portfolio can't handle the variance, then you shouldn't be investing with a short horizon in the first place, and you really should be saving instead of investing.

I know people were mocking the name drop and some of it was hilarious. I actually saw DD make a post on Twitter asking about lodging for WSOP and considered offering him a free ride in my timeshare from May 30th - June 12th in exchange for having his immense poker brain in proximity.

I argue you should not keep most of your money in a bank, and that it's not really that safe.

Interest rates are sub-inflation (or at least were last time I checked) so you're losing money in a bank.

But in addition to that I'm not sure how valuable FDIC insurance is. The federal government has shown tremendous willingness to prop up large financial institutions so the chances that Vanguard or Schwab goes under is pretty small. It's a bit cynical, I confess.

Banks are really convenient. I see that as their primary advantage. I do a lot of day to day stuff through the bank, and keep enough there for emergencies. That's about it.

I think the majority of people that are bad with money will find a bad way to spend a windfall.

If they have the capacity to use the windfall to pay down debt, save or invest, then they should also be able to take the extra money up front and do the same.

I also have no doubt that "most people" prefer to get a big refund (or "return" as they most likely call it) instead of only paying the minimum.

Spoiler alert: The majority of people are idiots.

Yeah. Most people have less than $1000 in immediate savings, cant handle an emergency, owe $7000 in household credit card debt and have a slew of other issues.

When I have a large amount of cash and/or chips on me, I always think that >50% of Americans would be ecstatic to have this in their savings account, maybe even their 401k.

Well not overly impressed with Bay101. I mean it seems like a better room than the cesspool that is the Commerce, but still lacking in a lot of ways. From my perspective it just amazes me the extent that the floors (also the dealers, but mostly the floors) let the players run roughshod over the game. In the first half hour I saw:

- cards thrown at a dealer
- several conversations in languages other than english, during the hand, between players with cards
- third / fourth / fifth / sixth people walking, then we it got to me playing hu with another guy and deciding that we didn’t want to play, demanding a seat another game ahead of us

Honestly not the end of the world, but this stuff would never fly in my main game. So after an hour last night I just packed it in with the game breaking debacle. Will give it another shot tonight but may be a short session.

Or to spend on hookers and blow.

Considering banks to be unsafe is really strange. You can say that it's not the most efficient thing, but "not really that safe"? That's somewhat absurd, and I'll note that you didn't actually argue the unsafeness of it.

Over the short term, it's not that big of a deal. Unless you've got hundreds of thousands of dollars just sitting around in a bank, it's small enough to not care.

But at least have your money in a money market account if you've got enough.

https://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual.../banklist.html

Banks do fail. Smaller ones, usually. If you're with a national bank, you're probably fine. But it's also just a fact that most banks are required to have FDIC insurance anyway. So you're more or less stuck with it.

Other financial institutions... well... there have been problems in the past.

Okay. But this doesn't really argue anything.

If this is the case, they are likely also to find a bad way to spend a smaller monthly amount. the chances that they'll be likely to find a positive way to spend a small windfall (we're not talking about winning the lottery) is higher than the chances that they'll find a positive way to spend a slightly larger monthly income. People will take their tax refund and pay off credit card debt that they would have had regardless of whether they had the extra monthly income. Except now they can pay it off instead of just getting deeper in the hole.

You can assert that, but I'll counter-assert that it's just not true. People legitimately ask the question, "What should I do with my tax refund?" It's something they talk about and think about, and then they are also often in position to actually do it when it comes in. On the other hand, a small increase in monthly income will probably be squandered.

People do way better when they're forced into good behaviors without thinking about it. This is why automatic contributions to retirement accounts are better for most people. They live based on the size of the paycheck they have coming in. If something is withdrawn before they see it, then they don't spend it.

I don't disagree.

If you're making short term trades, you're "trading", not "investing". If you know what you're doing, short term trading is much safer and more profitable than investing. You don't get caught by surprise earnings. You can react quickly to bad news, in fact you probably have stops in. Etc, etc.

Most of the dealers are passive. The floors are shared with the "California" games section, and often know very little about poker. Some of the dealers are pretty good with controlling the game, and there are some good floors that back them up. It would be nice if there were more of the strong employees.

WRT non-English at the tables, not a surprise considering less than half the bay area population are white Americans. The dealers tend to let it go unless someone complains, then they usually do a good job of enforcing the rule.

WRT walkers, it's annoying but not sure what could be done. You can ask the dealer for the brush to call the players back, and they will do it. A few years ago they instituted a lobby charge, where if you miss a blind they take $5 off your stack and throw it in the pot. I can tell you that from the cutoff -1 walking as fast as I could to take a whizz, I couldn't get back in time to avoid the $5 tax. Obviously that wouldn't happen every time, but apparently it was unpopular enough that it only lasted a few weeks.

Your idea of a short term window must be different from mine. I think of investing with less than a 5 year horizon to be short term investing. I'm not talking about day trading.

First, *IF*.

Second, I'm pretty sure this isn't true. Short term trading may be more profitable, but to say that it's "much safer" seems like a pretty significant exaggeration.

Doing that on the first missed blind seems harsh. You might just be gone for a couple minutes. No wonder it didn't last.

But doing that on your second missed blind seems more reasonable. By then, you've been gone for maybe 20-30 minutes?

Yeah the $5 charge starts with the second missed blind. Guy to my right just went through $20, so I guess they just don’t pick you up.

Right after I posted there is a commotion at the other table. A guy picking up to leave is asking a bunch of guys at the table if they want to go outside. He is laughing while he is doing this so I don’t think much of it. He walks away for a bit (presumably to the cage) then stops by our table on the way out the door. He leans into the guy across from me and says “what about you, want to go outside?” and the guy replies “no, it is too cold out”. The guy then says “yeah that is what I thought, because you are a little ****ing *****”.
Then the guy saunters out the door. So there is some discussion and it turns out no one knew this and it wasn’t a funny joke, particularly to the guy who got threatened. He doesn’t speak English well, so one of his friend calls the floor lady in the higher limit section. She basically says she is too busy to do anything and calls over another floor. He basically says there is nothing that he can do, so the shift supervisor is called. At this point, the 12 year old security guard walks by and they explain the situation to him. He says there is nothing he can do unless the guy who got threatened “wants to press charges”. He also says that once the guy leaves the building his hands are tied. He also offers to fight the guy next time.

Long story short, shift supervisor comes over and just has a bunch of jokes about the situation (multiple guys in the 20 game could take him, he used to box in the army). When it becomes clear people are pretty pissed he finally agrees to go see if the cameras have a picture of the guy (to what end, who knows). He comes back an hour later to confirm that they do have his picture.

Again, not a big thing - but I’ve never been in a room outside of CA that would let a situation like this escalate and do nothing about it. Most times, the dealer would
Immediately call the floor and the floor would call security if it didn’t stop. Apparently it had been going on for awhile while the guy was playing.

That's California poker.

Agreed, I phrased my initial assertion really poorly.

Savings accounts aren't much safer than mutual funds. Thirty years ago, there was more separation between banks and Wall Street. Banks loaned mortgages and assumed both the risks and benefits thereof. Lots of small banks were in play.

Over the past thirty years, and I think the 2008 financial crisis highlighted (at least to me) two things: 1. The amount of vertical integration (places you can get a savings account that also sell mutual funds), and 2. The amount of consolidation that has gone on.

So now it's not a totally separate question about a savings account at Localbank or a mutual fund at Fundcorp or buying fancy derivatives at Hedgecorp. It's what aisle you walk down at Giantmegafinancialsuperstore.

I think the federal government lacks the appetite to let Giantmegafinancialsuperstore go under, making their fancy derivatives almost as safe as savings accounts used to be.

I don't know if you're implying that a money market account requires a minimum balance (mine doesn't, or it's small enough that I didn't notice), but CDs are available to everyone for sure so I'll use rotating CDs (set up 1 per quarter for a year, each lasting a year so one matures every quarter) as an example.

You typically get 1-2% more with this system than with a savings account. Back when savings yielded 2-3%, the CD method gad yields in the 4-5% range. How significant it is depends on the relative size of the amount saved vs earnings. If you have half a year's salary in savings, 1-2% of the savings is 0.5-1% of your income. But if you have two years' salary in savings, that's 2-4% of your income.

Yes, there's probably way more people in the former situation or worse than in the latter situation or better, but that's not an excuse for not being optimal.

CDs today are only yielding like 1%. Yes, it's better than savings accounts, and having a CD ladder is good to maintain liquidity. Measured against inflation, I'm not sure if you're actually keeping up these days.

I guess I also consider CDs as being a savings vehicle, because the way I have myself set up I include them into the mix.

The majority of people have < 50% of their annual income saved. Well, the majority have < 10% of their annual income saved.

I just looked up Bank of America rates, savings is < 0.1% and CDs are 0.7%ish. Nerdwallet says CDs as high as 1.3-1.6% exist.

To be clear, I consider CDs essentially savings as well - I believe they are FDIC so the nominal risk is lower.

Nerdwallet is listing MMAs in the 1.5-1.8% range, which is actually lower than I expected, but I think it highlights the point that the traditional advantages to the bank-based savings accounts are being whittled down.

Neither am I. Short term means short term.

It's not an exaggeration. You are just underinformed in this particular area.

WAT? They started the lobby charge again? The time I was posting about was several years ago and didn't last long.

If you're otherwise going to sit in your hotel and order pay per view porn, I would suggest playing a little 1/2/3 NL at the M8trix. Last time I went the 75/150 LHE was becoming a regular thing too.