skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor is a classic you should probably read. Burton Malkiel's Random Walk Down Wall Street was also interesting. I hear that Hull's Options Futures and Other Derivatives is a good intro to the more mathematically sophisticated instruments, but I haven't read it myself.
and be stunned when they dive when you start playing for real money

So you're saying practice makes you less prepared to invest for real? Don't follow this logic at all.

What it is good for is understanding the mechanics of the market. There is a lot more to it than buy/sell - even for simple investors are reporting periods, dividends, options, funds, exchange rates, interest rates, etc.

Practice lets you get a feel for those events and how they drive the market and your investing.

You need more solid evidence, not just faith.

When I say believe in, I mean something that fits your world view... Not that you (simply) believe will make money.

If you want to invest purely to make money, that's fine too - I find I'm more successful when I invest in areas that are closer to my own interests/world-view/whatever you want to call it.
Search Advertising - Up, Down, Or Flat?
Doesn't look like HAML is as readable as Seaside HTML building, maybe it just takes getting used to. The beauty of Seaside is now less in continuations, but more of reusable code and components. (I have always used and read the term reusable as within a project, not necessary as libraries).
What's It Like to Be a Girl in Tech?
ITunes is a Software from The Future (10000 AD)
http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Self-defense-Manual-Intell...

Summary - buy index funds, keep your costs low, invest for the long term.
The best advice I've heard about trading is poker advice.

"There's a sucker at every table. If you can't spot him, it's you."

Cycles like the one we're going through really illustrate this. Look at all the suckers who bought 2nd homes in Stockton as an "investment." If you realized this, you bet against that trend, and made money.
IBM Lotus Symphony is an Excellent--And Free--Office Suite
Index funds. As a broad generalization, index funds are superior to managed funds due to higher long-term returns and far lower fees.

As another broad generalization, you can have higher returns than index funds (aka the market) only at the cost of increased risk.
How VCs Block Exits
Need to see
As someone who once worked for a hedge fund, please allow me to give you some words of advice:

- what advantage do you think you will have over others? Unless you have friends in high places and plan to do insider trading (which is very illegal), you will be one more amateur playing against the professionals in the banks and hedge funds. The pros work at least 12 hours a day and have years of experience. They are also better connected than you. So... what advantage do you think you have? If you can't answer this simple question, I advise you to choose a game where you have an advantage.

- if you think I am being too pessimistic and defeatist, do read Prof. Larry Harris' paper The Winners and Losers of the Zero-Sum Game: The Origins of Trading Profits, Price Efficiency and Market Liquidity at http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~lharris/ABSTRACT/Zerosum.htm

- be ready to lose your $2000 (like someone else mentioned before) and accept it as a "price" to pay to learn something about investing.

- brokers are crooks. All of them. They will "rape" you whenever they have a chance.

- don't invest in stocks, invest in yourself. If you are on HN, I assume you like to write code. Investing $2000 in an idea you might have will likely yield better dividends in the long term.

I am not trying to be pedantic or anything. I am only trying to put things in perspective. Everybody would like to make money in the stock market, but few manage to do it... and the ones who do manage to make money consistently over the years (and within the law) most likely have years and years of experience and hard work under their belts.
Actually, I would say that making symbols and string distinct is one of the worst parts of the Ruby language, along with it weird use of ascii codes for characters.

Of course, this is a feature that provides some people with some speed-ups and some pseudo-safety. But it basically goes against the advantage of modern scripting languages - the ability to program in the large, to use "integer" rather the umteen varieties of bit chunks provided by c and such.

The article explains symbols fine but I want to get to the next, better scripting language where such things are discarded.
Also, "Fooled by Randomness"
Google Drive Rumors Flare Up Again
many webcomics make money off t-shirts, books, etc etc with a similar model.
Well, as far as informational advantage, all company related information seems to be public - balance sheets, conference calls, etc. Are you referring to information that deals with the second to second fluctuations of stock prices due to sell-offs and fund activity?

Are there any services that help to narrow the informational gap between common investors and professional managers?
Save your money and spend it on something useful instead.

Or buy a newspaper stock section blown up to wall-size, a monkey, and some darts.

But seriously, Google "survivorship bias".

The ones selling advice are doing so because they were the ones lucky enough to survive and smart enough to realize that selling advice is more predictably profitable than playing the market.
Optimizing your very large site for search
"Merely famous people have pictures of themselves on the wall. Really great people have pictures of dead people on the wall, and on their desks. It's one of the first things I look for when I go into somebody's office."

I think the point about connecting to the past is a good one. I'm not completely sure why, but great people and projects certainly seem to have a sense that they are connected to a long line of predecessors.

(Go Deacons!!)
My guess is they'll dump it and delete everyone's data as soon as the share price tanks.

Google is apparently not so rich and powerful that they can't shut down an (!) online notepad.
I suggest using the Department of Education college data. Most of the ~7,000 US schools listed have homepage URL listed, which you could grab the domain from with relative ease. Aside from that, you're probably looking at parsing Wikipedia pages or grabbing data from Petersons, which is not free. The DOE dataset is a good starting point, but you'll run into a fair (~300? I don't remember exactly) schools without domains listed, but they're schools like Joe's Barber School, not major universities. Any reasonably sized school has a domain in the DOE dataset. Peterson's is good, but they have restrictions on use which can be annoying to deal with if you care about legality.

Also, on the note of .edu domains being restricted to post -secondary institutions; that's not entirely true. That wasn't the original rule, so some non-university level schools are grandfathered in and own .edu domains. For instance, my high school has a .edu domain.
My favorite posts and sites:

Mark Cuban's post on stocks:
http://blogmaverick.com/2008/09/08/talking-stocks-and-money/

A blog of a hedge fund trader in Japan:
http://nihoncassandra.blogspot.com

A blog of a hedge fund trader in London:
http://macro-man.blogspot.com/

Reminices of a stock operator - written in the 1920's, everything he says still applies today.

If you really want to understand both the economy and stocks, try doing this search in google:
site:blogs.cfr.org/setser/ mencius moldbug
and read every comment by Mencius.

Finally, I recommend a short comment I made about stocks and investing here: http://www.newmogul.com/item?id=2587

I was a huge fan of the book "A Random Walk Down Wall St" when I first read it. But now I believe that it is seriously misguided. The stock market is a far different beast than it was in 1970.
Opportunity costs have nothing to do with utilization. Moreover, they're covered in my initial comment "Economic sustainability is a function of cost and benefits, not utilization."

Low utilization may imply "waste" but cost and benefit is what matters. Benefits that I get for the costs I incur determine whether buying a new PC is a good idea, not how idle it is.

In fact, trying to drive to maximum utilization frequently results in higher costs and lower benefits.
If there are, everyone has access to the information, neutralizing it's utility to you. A few things you might want to read:

http://www.wallstreetselfdefensemanual.com/the_wall_street_s...
http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/best-investment-advice-youll...
Elon Musk Is Betting His Fortune on a Mission Beyond Earth's Orbit
What's the matter with these length limits on text areas? As I see it, usability mistake is that these limits exist, not that they are not clearly displayed.

It is probably wise to have some internal limit of size of text saved somewhere, but such limit can well be something like 100k, which normal user has no real chance of exceeding and thus you don't have to present it to user in any way.
Today there are so many ways you can "practice" trading I'd recommend using a stock market game before jumping in. You will make many mistakes in trading; might as well make them on a simulator.

http://vse.marketwatch.com/Game/Homepage.aspx

The people saying "be prepared to lose it all" are crazy. You only need to be prepared to loose it all if you're undertaking a really risky strategy.

Of course this depends on your goals. If you're just picking individual stocks based on thin information with little industry knowledge and hopes to make a quick buck, then, yeah be prepared to lose it all.

If you are trying to enter the market for the first time with a long-term portfolio strategy, you're doing it wrong if you must also prepare to lose it all.
Can you elaborate on how 'hilarious' the low-budgetry is? I have flown with RyanAir many a time, and found it to be rather charming despite the low-budget nature.
One more thing... +1 for the people suggesting to read stuff by Warren Buffet and doing index funds. Long-term, buy-and-hold, diversified investing is the best way to go.
The sad truth is that there's often a lot of suckers at the table. Spotting the sucker doesn't mean you're not one.
How can you believe the efficient market theory after the events of October 2008? The stock market may be unpredictable, but it is far from rational. IMHO, the analysis "A Random Walk Down Wall St" does not really understand the nature of the modern stock market (although reading it is better than listening to Jim Cramer).
First of all, ignore Jim Cramer!! Stay as far away from him as possible. The little bits of truth he speaks are not worth wading through the coin tosses, just stay away.

Next, when you're trying to figure out which stocks to buy, forget about the stocks. Don't look to PE's, and all the other ratios to figure out where the market is going.

Look at the world around you. Look at where the /world/ is going. Which things are going to be hot 20 years from now? Those are the things that are going to be your biggest wins. You only need one or two or three really big winners to set you for life and you have many years to find them.

Don't look at the latest headlines to decide where to put your money. You may make money trading stocks, buying at $22 and selling at $26, it is possible and that is very likely to happen.

But that is not the goal. Four dollars is not the goal. Four million dollars is the goal and that takes years and years.

So, take your time. Don't invest any real dollars for a year. Take the dollars you would invest and put them into books and education and paper trading. I know it sounds lame and where's the fun in that, but if fun is what you are looking for, go to vegas. Poker is more exciting and easier to figure out how to win and you can make a lot of money with a $2,000 bank roll if you play your cards right.

If you are just absolutely itching to put that money into the market, look in to index funds. Index funds are easily managed funds that don't cost a lot of money to keep running but are still diversified.

Put your money into one of those, like buy the QQQQ or something -- IT MAY CRASH right after you buy it, the point isn't to make money, the point is to pay attention. Pay attention to the short term swings in the market, but don't buy or sell based on them.

Look at the fundamentals of the entire market to decide when to make big moves. Make little moves on little time frames, big moves on big time frames.

For example, you could have looked at the markets a couple years back and known that the future didn't look so hot. You probably didn't know when everything was going to collapse, but you knew the fundamentals weren't looking very good. Okay, so then you might want to tend toward market underweight.

Anyway, lots of useless advice summed up in a couple words: Don't get trigger happy. Use your head. Practice makes perfect. Stocks are not a get rich quick scheme.
The Mother of All Demos:
Doug Englebart showing off an NLS at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8734787622017763097 of which Alan was so fondly referencing in his lecture.
> Are you kidding? Disney very frequently makes kids this huge.

"Very frequently"? I don't see enough "kids this huge" to justify "frequently".

And they didn't write the show for Cyrus. They created the show and she auditioned. They offered. She declined. They waited.

If Disney can create hits at will, why don't they?

Instead, they ride the hits that they have. They try a lot of things. When something works small, they go bigger. If it still works, they hit the gas.

Like I said, if you can do better, big bucks await.
Oh, it's a game all right. The points are dollars. You want to make as many dollars as possible by playing the game right. The hard part is figuring out the rules. Because a lot of people don't know and they still get paid a lot of money to tell the world the wrong ones.
the article is analyzing "cost of acquisition" relative to revenue. As noted in other replies, this is not including total operating expenses. So for the business, the actual net profit margin is going to be lower than this.
Just for the sake of clarity, my post didn't go so far as to endorse the efficient market hypothesis as 100% valid. I do however think it is fundamental to have an understanding of the basic precepts before diving in the market.
I'm saying that "practice" doesn't affect your preparedness for something that's either intrinsically random (and I mean true-random), or affected by knowledge you don't have but others with tons of capital will. You can fool yourself into thinking you're better prepared, but you're not.

"Getting good" in fantasy stocks is the equivalent of flipping a coin a hundred times, and getting some heads streaks towards the end.
I'm pretty sure there is a Windows Explorer add-in that makes your GMail account in effect a "web drive". Could this be that?
Well now I'm waiting for the obligatory list of papers Microsofters(?) have published. Cause I'm sure its long.
$2000 really isn't enough to "play the market". As the other comments have suggested there is too much stacked against you.

If you really want to try your hand, I'd pick 1 moderately risky stock with a shot at long-term (5-7 years) surprise growth. There is a high probably your $2000 will become $200, but that probability exists almost universally.

Personally, if I was going to bet a $2000 chunk, I would throw it at Ford stock today (F). This is based on the fact that I used to work there (FSIC), still know several people in the company, and have a belief that they have a solid long-term strategy. There is a high probability that they'll run out of money before they can fully enact that strategy, but if they do, that $2.50 stock will easily be $25 in 7 years. Or $0. That's the fun of trying to make money on individual stock trades :)

In 5 years, you'll either have a decent chunk of money, or nothing. Neither outcome is life-changing anyway.
I agree except that Clojure is specifically intended to be used functional, and not as OO. Clojure is not pure FP as it does allow state changes (in a controlled way), but that's an acknowledgement that state changes are useful and purity can be, I'll say, difficult. The way Java's OO embraces state changes is not the same principle, and makes things more difficult. OO style is possible in Clojure, but that's not what the language is meant for.
Venture capital fund raising drops 71 percent in Q4
I recall reading somewhere that most pro traders can't even beat the common index funds.
I've never invested a penny in stocks, but my friend has and has his ups and downs..but is currently down..about $13,000 (he is your age). I highly recommend you do as others have mentioned and INVEST IN YOURSELF, not someone elses business. But if you insist.. I recommend you NOT be like every other "average investor" and have a read at what tim sykes has to say about it all ... http://timothysykes.com/
"Can't your budget be diverted?"
Buy AAPL long.
I agree with what you say, but at some point it's a good idea to buy stocks.

1) If you buy a range of dividend stocks you have vary good odds of making money over the long term. Just not a lot of money.

2) Always trade at least 1k or the transaction costs are going to kill you.

3) Time is on your side. 2,000 * 1.05 ^ (65 - 21) = 17,000, but paying taxes on this every year is going to bite you.

4) Mutual funds have a worse return than just buying stocks, but the transaction costs are less harsh so if your just in the market for a few years go with an index fund.
I disagree. That's just allowing people to vote other people's money away. The point of having rights is that my property is mine and the majority can't vote it away. In your system, where does it end? The US is a republic (nation of laws), not a democracy (nation of people) - democracy is a good mechanism for electing the government and, hopefully, keeping is relatively clean.

The bonds you describe may be a smart improvement to less-controlled taxation, but it's still having the state control the economy. Using the analogy to the church, that's like not outlawing other religions or atheism, but using state funds for one religion of preference - that's still a lot of control and weight the government shouldn't have.

I think of it this way: the government has the guns (and rightfully so), so everything they do is ultimately by force. Therefore, we need to severly limit what they can do, leaving the rest of us with freedom.
"Getting good" in fantasy stocks is the equivalent of flipping a coin a hundred times, and getting some heads streaks towards the end.

So using real money instead mitigates this random process in some way? That doesn't follow.

I'm not going to get into your characterisation of the market. If you believe it random, then I'll let that influence your own investing... However, investing is still has a lot of technical aspects, and practice does improve your understanding of this.
+1 I'd recommend reading The Boglehead's Guide to Investing. And checking out the forums over here: http://www.bogleheads.org/ Amazingly intelligent discussion going on.
I'm not suggesting that.

You should run small experiments (<$50) per day until you figure out that you get can profitable. Only then do you scale up. The point is understanding what the microeconomics look like, so that you know how to grow the business over time profitably.

If you can go viral, that's even better obviously. I've written extensively on that also - and it's my preferred approach. But it's just true that for most subscription products, it's easier to buy the users than to acquire them virally.
Here are some things to keep in mind:

- I think that it is best to invest directly in securities (only resorting to index funds if you really must outsource your thinking). You'll learn the most if you make the big decisions.

- Learn how to analyze the public information available. Cash flows. Balance sheets. Income statements. Get an accounting book! Learn about the types of securities and alternatives to equity investing (especially the various kinds of bonds).

- Market prices are based on combination of innumerable emotional and rational reactions to the real value of the companies behind the shares. Only over the long term will the price reflect the real value of these businesses. At any point, the price can be completely outside of reason, so beware of and be ready to take advantage of the stupidity of crowds.

- Invest in types of businesses that you can understand, or plan on spending lots of time researching "in the field". Really focus on a few. When I was buying shares of Nabisco, I was spending late nights in the cookie aisle at Vons. When I started buying Apple, I spent serious time at their first toe-hold at CompUSA and later at their stores. I recently spent time at the Crocs stand at the mall to evaluate this company.

- Learn the different investment mental models and build one for yourself. Graham. Buffett. Munger. Lynch. Fisher.

- Learn about related fields. Psychology. Macroeconomics. Patent law. Whatever is important to industries that you are going to focus on.

- Keep investing. When you are 40 or 50 years old you might be half-good at it.
The only real advantage open to you is a better understanding of the industry than most investors. EX: Buying dell in 1995, the market is booming and they have a good reputation so you do the math and think they are undervalued.
Also by Taleb "The Black Swan"
I run a stock options website (investingwithoptions.com) and am known as one of the better options guys out there.

2k won't get you far in terms of trading. You should probably look into passive investing. You will get much larger returns investing in yourself than trying to speculate on the market.

If you do want to speculate, you might want to look into index verticals. They limit your risk (50-150 loss max ) and have less comission vs trading stock ($3 vs $10). You'll at least lose money more slowly. And your delta risk initially isn't a lot so you can unwind a position with much less loss early than if you were to get into futures/stock.

Me personally I trade options using technical and sentimental analysis, which is heresy around these "effecient market" places.

Oh, and don't listen to Cramer or CNBC. They're asshats.

I've got a pretty decent blogroll built up on my site with bloggers that risk their own money for a living, so that's a good place to start.
what's your problem?
U.S. Venture Fund-Raising Plunges
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Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com has put together some incredible interviews with some amazing people with purpose of helping entrepreneurs create better Internet companies. Amazingly, all of the interviews are free!
The ones selling advice are doing so because they were the ones lucky enough to survive and smart enough to realize that selling advice is more predictably profitable than playing the market.

Don't be so quick to judge. There are plenty of guys out there that trade their own money as well as have services on the side. The investment service field is lucrative to proven traders because it is much less volatile and risky than their current proffestion.

Brian Shannon is one example (alphatrends.net). He sells books and seminars but he also sticks his neck out there and actually admits when he's wrong.
Almost no content "Symphony is good" and has it's history wrong.

Lotus Smartsuite used to batle MS Office - Symphony is the new product.
If you buy a range of dividend stocks you have vary good odds of making money over the long term. Just not a lot of money.

That's nice until they cut their dividend. Which should be happening in the next 6 months in weak sectors.
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