Such a ******ed thread.

The only people qualified to answer would be the ones that have professionally done all three - and amongst NVGtards there are probably none.

While trading might be a bit more complex, there is certainly more luck and variance involved than in poker. Don't know anything about sports betting though. I guess it's more closer to trading than poker when it comes to how much luck is involved.

Sports betting and trading have been around for a longer time in the mainstream, which is probably the reason why it's a lot tougher to make money. Poker and it's statistical analysis hasn't been around that long. (But it certainly has taken the effect with games getting tougher.)

Read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book "Black Swan".

While it has gotten a certain criticism, there are some points that hold very true.
There are way more stock trading donks that have gotten lucky on hot streaks than there are random donks who have made a rush from smaller stakes to nosebleeds. When the markets are in upswing, you can pick basically "any" stock cause the trend is upward.

I would never trust some random stock analysts and their tips. It's basically the same as reading some random donk's thoughts on HSNL threads. They're just worthless. If they were any good, they would STFU and be playing or trading by themselves and not give a damn what other ppl say. (This is probably why HSNL has so few quality threads lately and most of the insightful ppl have stopped posting there.)

"Skill to luck factor" is really confusing way of phrasing it.

Definition?

trading has no skill, its all about being able to lie. trading is 70% luck, 30% lying.

Sports Betting
Trading
Poker

And there is such a huge gap between each of them. Try each for a year and then try each for a year and be profitable.

Trading is the hardest because it's the least fair game. Prices are too easily manipulated in non-transparent ways.

most people are too stupid to realize you can make profits every year in the bonds market as opposed to trading. trading for the most part, sans a few all stars, is very similar to sports betting (its a zero sum game where the only year after year winner is the book or the broker)

Does that mean roullette has an even higher skill factor?

80% roi betting sports? Sustainable!

if you win yea, most of the roulette winners used wheel biases to record a profit.

Poker #3. Plus your beating ******s. The others not so much

No, it means that sports betting has a higher skill factor vs. trading vs. poker. I would put roulette somewhere south of Casino War.

I think "trading" is way too wide term to be used here. What people perceive as very hard is "day trading" where you make multiple trading decisions every day. Just like poker grinders do. The edge are most likely very small and it's a hard thing to make a living at but with enough capital even small edges can be exploited with huge profits. Especially in the currency market, since it's a zero-sum game and you have to able to trade with very small commission otherwise you're probably gonna get beaten by rake.

However, trading (as I have done it) is something that I follow the markets daily, but I make purchases only few times a year - maybe even not that often. (This year I've made none.)

Beginning of 2009 when the general atmosphere was that stock was very low and going even lower I made few random purchases and some based on tips I received. Nevertheless, I could've picked up pretty much any stocks as by summer 2009 the OMHEX index was up like +50%. The portfolio I purchased is up currently +97,72%. Definitely the easiest bacon I've ever made.

Quite frankly I would never trust a "stock analyst" or some "fund manager" on their expertise how the markets will develop. If they were genuinely really good at what they are doing, they would be trading from their homes and not care a damn about their $5k/monthly job at some ****ty bank.

One good example from this is when the finance professor of Helsinki School of Economics said somewhere between 2007-2008 that "it is good time to buy stocks, as the interest rates are high - it is a sign of healthy and strong financial development/status". His reads were almost as pristine as Jennifer Tilly's on Antonius.

One professional Finnish poker player (Aki Pyysing) said well in his column last week that financial advisors tend to agree more often than not with each other. This way when they're wrong, they're wrong as a collective - so no-one gets fired.

where's the 'stupid poll' radio button. there's no luck in poker.

Hmm, correct me if I'm wrong but stock market shouldn't be a zero-sum game because stocks can gain value without some losing value.

Thus everyone can be winning in a stock market when a corporate makes profit by finding, let's say, new resources of oil.

However, currency market should be a zero-sum game.

"Beating ******s"?

As if sports betting and trading wouldn't be games of human interaction and trying to outwit other people? There are as much ******s in sports betting business than in poker. Probably like 99% of the people in sports do their decisions based on their feeling, the teams nationality, who are they supporting for etc.

Whoah, the realistic guys have a slight lead on the poker fanboys atm

IMO, almost everyone in this thread is misunderstanding the question: Which one takes more skill?

Not "Which one is harder to do?"
Not "Which one is most profitable?"
Not "Which one is most consistent?"
Not "Which one is most difficult to make money at?"

I vote that poker takes the most skill, because it requires that you play against other players, outwit them, make adjustments based on their play, and demonstrate greater skill than them.

Trading and sports betting require a ton of research obviously, but I don't equate knowledge to skill. I think it's easier to be more profitable at poker, but it takes certain skills that many people don't have. Trading and sports betting can be beat with simply brute force research. There are surely some skills that help someone be better at them, but when you don't compete directly against other humans, the skill factor is greatly diminished.

That's a good question, and while it's true that *over time* the stock market can be a "rising tide that raises all boats", because value is created, in the short term it really is basically a zero-sum game. Trading (as opposed to investing) is short term by definition, so for all intents and purposes, trading is zero-sum.

And, like you said, Forex is just straight up zero-sum.

I totally agree with your basic idea about skill vs. knowledge.

The only part I disagree with is (as I talked about earlier) is that every poker situation is different when it comes to how much skill it will take to beat it.

Again, if I play PLO8 against the guys in my rake-free, donk-filled home game, it will take very little skill to beat them (knowledge, in fact, is about all it takes - that and some basic math).

If I play midstakes PLO8 on Full Tilt on the other hand, I need a great deal of skill.

So you can't just say "poker", as if "poker" is a constant!

That's one of the ways that poker is different than sports or trading. Sports and trading are constants - never harder or easier from one venue to the next (except for maybe differences in commissions/vig), and neither of them are a direct sort of competition like poker is.

There is plenty of nuance to all three categories.

Of course this is going to be relative to each person's skill set.

I'm big on sports betting, and it certainly helps me pay the bills, but even I realize that the market and poker are far more challenging endeavors.

Sports betting is more of a "monkey see/monkey do" thing than pure skill - either going with the crowd or against it when it when you see people making square bets. I guess you could say the same thing about the market.

Interesting topic - worth the thought.

I don't disagree with this point, I just didn't consider it or mention it in my post. It's a good point, but I think it complicates things. I guess I was trying to think about poker as a whole, with a random sampling of opponents. Similarly, I was considering trading and sports betting as a whole, with no specific details (day-trading/long-term, large/small cap, NBA/NFL/MLB, etc.).

I guess you could argue that if you always played against absolutely awful opponents, poker takes almost zero skill to beat (i.e., you could just operate as an extremely simple bot). You would just do a little research beforehand to find out what beats what.

I don't think that there is much difference really. I don't know anything about trading, but I would say poker is the easiest, because there it's easiest to find fish. In sportsbetting you are mostly betting against a professional who is the best odds setter in the game, but you have an advantage if you have followed some small team, which the sportsbetting sites with thousand of games haven't paid as much attention to.
In trading (do OP mean stocks?) I would guess that it is the same thing. If you have some knowledge that your opponent don't.

trading is more difficult than poker and its not close

people making money off of people playing cards recreationally (who pros make the money from) is nothing like people needing to make a living off of trading decisions

now if your question with poker involves a certain amount of $$ they need to make a year, including considerations like tax that would be a much more objective question and maybe not as straightforward an answer

For any idiot that thinks poker is more skillful than the trading or sports betting. Wander into any casino and put your name on a list for Omaha 8 or even Omaha and see how many players don't even know the rules for either game properly and tell me what is harder to beat.