Lol at this thread~ Bump +1
Yeah, it is kinda funny.
And when you think about the whole Wild-West character in a certain way, there's a silver lining. One crucial difference between the cyber markets and the stock market is that there's no minimum commission for cybers. Consequently, I can get stung and learn a real lifetime life lesson for less than $1,000 - even less than $100.
In the not-so-good old days, I would have had to have blown several thousand dollars - or more - in the stock market to learn the same life lesson.
Yeah, in the interim it's embarrassing - but some of the people here who got stung will apply what they learned the hard way to stock-market investing. If they do, and avoid those same mistakes that cost them hundreds here, they'll save thousands in the stock market.
Look at it this way: imagine a thirteen-year-old whose parents set him up with a trust account at a discount brokerage that starts off with $1,000. For most thirteen-year-olds, that's a lot of money. He gets excited and emotional and ends up blowing the $1,000 to money heaven.
And then, his dad sits down with him, reviews what he did wrong, and sums up with a life lesson the kid will never forget.
Fast forward twenty years. The "kid" is now a professional with a big chunk of money in the stock market. He still remembers how he got stung, and why he got stung, and picks his stocks so as to avoid the mistakes that he made when a teenager. The same mistakes his thirtysomething colleagues are making with their own portfolios because they never were inoculated against them like he was. In the end, a fellow like that will end up saving a lot of money simply because he's already battle-scarred once he gets serious money to invest or speculate with.
Of course, this above scenario assumes that he'll learn from being burned