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Comment by rapsey | Hacker News Reader

Uncertanty is the time for the best buying opportunities.

Sure, you can take a gamble and win. But you can also lose big. History shows that, lacking a crystal ball, you're more likely to lose than win.

So there's an opportunity for some investors to win big but most of them will lose. And even the ones that win will likely lose out on their next gamble. Such is the way of unstable markets.

>History shows that, lacking a crystal ball, you're more likely to lose than win.

Does it? My gut feel says 50/50

There are generally more ways to lose than to win. Entropy is like that.

Well obviously it’s risky. History has also shown that uncertain times is when the largest fortunes have been made.

My point was that calling uncertain times uninvestable is stupid. It is a different climate and for a certain type of investor it is a gold mine.

> History shows that, lacking a crystal ball, you're more likely to lose than win.

This is the opposite of what history shows. Markets have grown on average. Buy a varied assortment of assets, an index of British assets, you’ll do fine. Just don’t expect good quarters in the short term. You’ll be up a lot in 10 or 20 years.

Yes if you average over the market you're likely to make money in the long term. Though note that in some cases long term can be on the order of two or more decades.

Buying into a risky market right before a down turn will only increase the time for you to see a return on your investment. Meanwhile you could have been making a "steady" income in less uncertain markets. Or even invested in the world market as a whole.

It's interesting how many of the lead Brexiters have such strong connections to financial services. I do wonder sometimes if the whole thing is a play on the markets because I haven't seen any cogent explanation for why Brexit is a good idea yet. What exactly are they going to do with the things they have taken back control of that is better than how these things are currently run?

Disaster Capitalism:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/04/disast...

It could be said though, that a lot of the leading Bremainers have strong connections to government jobs, no? What I'm saying is, if the Brexiter's dayjob has "corrupted" them, the same could be said about their opponents, no?

I doubt that most British people in finance were Brexiters, but rather Bremainers. And so it's not the job that tainted them, but rather the job they chose suited their personal traits.

For the funds that have relations with policits, I think it's mostly getting rid of regulations imposed by the EU.

I'm not sure I understand, they are all paid an MP's salary which is something like £75k per year. So I'm not sure that their government jobs are all that valuable compared to the amount of money that could be made by gaming a whole economy. Unless you mean civil servants? There are some retired civil servants that have come out as anti Brexit but the civil service will need to expand post Brexit so I'm not sure what they would have to gain personally from taking this position? If anything, and in common with a lot of other middle class Londoners, they are probably afraid of the value of their houses and investments dropping.

National governments in Europe are notoriously pro-EU despite the apparent contradictions involved (the EU makes those governments less powerful and important). The reason seems to be the EU's habit of giving powerful supporters in national governments exceptionally well compensated jobs as rewards after they leave / get kicked out by elections. See Peter Mandelson for a UK example.

There are myriad ways for ex-politicians to make money afterwards that are easier than becoming an EU bureaucrat. Tony Blair supposedly makes over a million a year from speaking engagements. Boris Johnson earns £150k p/a (double his MP's salary) by writing a weekly click bait opinion piece article for the Telegraph and he's still an MP. Honestly the idea of the EU influencing politicians by enticing them with high salaries for the few politicians that get the chance to be on the Council of Ministers is ridiculous if you stop to think about it.

It's not just a one-off gamble but more likely a plan to become the world's offshore and money laundering heaven. Well, relatively of course. This is why the emphasis in the early Brexit debate was on decoupling the country from the EU regulations.

In other words there might be some chance of immediate and long-term benefits in "hard" Brexit for some, but an enormous short and long term damage for the rest of the population.

Also the best time to sell crap at a cut rate to lose the liabilities.

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