I never purchase launch iPO's.

"It's probably overpriced." I have not purchased any FB stock, because advertising looks too competitively razor-thin for any such company to be appealing. And I don't really want more ads, so that limits what growth I would even like to see from this or any company.

I'm immensely glad I put my money in AAPL not FB

1,887 page views and 9,001 "yes" votes?

I don't buy stocks. However, I was incredulous when I heard all of the hype surrounding the IPO. I kept looking back to MySpace. It was facebook before facebook was facebook. Now it is a hollow shell of itself. Social media is too new and changes too fast. One paradigm shift and facebook is no more.

I wasn't the least bit surprised when the IPO tanked.

Really this is all pseudo-investing. Notice that you are all valuing the stocks in dollars. FIAT dollars that we have today aren't backed by anything, so all stock is essentially worthless and that is why all stocks eventually go to 0 value. The only way to preserve and grow your wealth (without getting lucky and gambling in the market) is to invest in something of value, like precious metals or real estate. Things that have consistently kept value for thousands of years. Look into silver, it has tons of applications in industry and has nowhere to go but up. Or you could go with a standard approach and buy gold -- REAL money with REAL value that has never lost value.

Maybe the best way to think of stock investing is like social security on the open market: A well orchestrated ponzi scheme.

Here's a video that might get you more on the right way of thinking for investors:

Really this is all pseudo-investing. Notice that you are all valuing the stocks in dollars. FIAT dollars that we have today aren't backed by anything, so all stock is essentially worthless and that is why all stocks eventually go to 0 value. The only way to preserve and grow your wealth (without getting lucky and gambling in the market) is to invest in something of value, like precious metals or real estate. Things that have consistently kept value for thousands of years. Look into silver, it has tons of applications in industry and has nowhere to go but up. Or you could go with a standard approach and buy gold -- REAL money with REAL value that has never lost value.

So, dollars are worthless because they are FIAT dollars? Yet, you can get something of value (gold) with something that has no value (dollars)? Doesn't that automatically mean that dollars must have some value if you can buy gold with it? If you agree with that, then you just contradicted yourself. If you disagree, then you don't understand the concept of "relative value". Either way, I think you're inconsistent and don't know what you're talking about.

FIAT dollars that we have today aren't backed by anything, so all stock is essentially worthless and that is why all stocks eventually go to 0 value. The only way to preserve and grow your wealth (without getting lucky and gambling in the market) is to invest in something of value, like precious metals or real estate.

What if I spend all my money to buy gold, but then someone mines an asteroid and brings home more tonnes of gold that have ever been mined in human history and floods the marker, turning gold into a completely abundant (and thus worthless) commodity? Or if I buy acres and acres of fertile, scenic, peaceful land, but it's hit by a stray nuclear-AIDS-volcano bomb?
Then, I'm pretty sure that I'd wish to still have my backed-by-nothing-but-legislation paper IOU notes that I can exchange for food and shelter.
At the same time, it's also possible that my IOU notes are systematically devalued by scheming bankers... so none of those options are truly safe.
All value, fiat (not an acronym, a latin word) currency or commodity or otherwise, is imaginary and transient. All that matters is if that imagined value is going to change over the course of your investment period. Or you can run off and join a utopian commune and do away with trade.

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I agree with both of you for the most part, but I think it's best that we don't feed the troll.

Investing that reliably pays your bills without you having to work is when you end up owning some means of production that others need to do work. To make a small, easy to imagine example: imagine that I were so poor I could not afford a computer to program games on. Then you could invest into me, yourself owning the computer that I program games on, and take away all the revenue except for what you need to pay to keep me alive and working, which is very little. End result is that you are earning most of income from my work, and living off it.

Computers are too cheap for this to work, and good programmers have leverage via their shortage, so the above scheme would not work. Industrial equipment, land, organizational structures, and so on, are expensive enough or hard enough to come by so that workers can not afford those and this scheme works.

Really this is all pseudo-investing. Notice that you are all valuing the stocks in dollars. FIAT dollars that we have today aren't backed by anything, so all stock is essentially worthless and that is why all stocks eventually go to 0 value. The only way to preserve and grow your wealth (without getting lucky and gambling in the market) is to invest in something of value, like precious metals or real estate. Things that have consistently kept value for thousands of years. Look into silver, it has tons of applications in industry and has nowhere to go but up. Or you could go with a standard approach and buy gold -- REAL money with REAL value that has never lost value.

Gold is traditionally a very safe low risk investment. But that doesn't mean dollars are worthless (are you telling me you have no currency, and everything is stored in metals?)

Low risk also typically means less chance of making a return on your investment. Typically it makes sense to invest in a range of things - gold is good for a safe backup, but banks are good for a guaranteed interest rate and still reasonably safe, and then there are investments which are higher risk, but can provide better returns.