Poker Game vs Investing

Ein55 Newsletter No 056 - image - poker game

There are many similarities between Poker Game and Investing. In fact, we could have more special edges or unfair advantage in investing but most people do not know.

1) Technical Analysis (TA) – Reward / Risk, Following Trend

For both poker and investing, we bid or invest more when the reward/risk is higher.  If we play Black Jack (total = 21 points), if you have 12 points, likely you will take the risk to add 1 more card because your chance (a card with 9 or less points, so that not exceeding 21 points) is high. Similarly, for trading or investing, eg. when stock price is near to the support, we would start to enter as the reward (upside) is more than the risk (downside).

Similarly, when a poker player has smooth win (good trend in winning), eg. facing a weak opponent, may add more position to maximize the gains.  This is similar to a trader who follows the market trend which is an edge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackjack

 

2) Personal Analysis (PA) – Manage your emotions

A good poker player is calm, even holding lousy cards, will show confidence, so that opponents could not tell.  There is a poker game Bluff, the player could have lousy cards but pretend to have perfect cards. Opponent who challenges the truth could suffer as sometimes the player will purposely tell the truth. Similarly, a good investor will use the market greed and fear as a weapon, doing differently from the majority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluff_(poker)

 

3) Fundamental Analysis (FA)

This is the main difference between Poker game and Investing.   Poker is a pure probability game, therefore TA & PA are the main edges. For investing, we could be selective to only consider strong business as they are more likely to grow in share price.

 

4) Optimism Strategies = FA + TA +PA (integration of all into strategies)

Strategies formation is important, integrating all the critical factors. Each poker player and trader / investor has own unique strategy, aligning to own personality, based on learning from positive experiences.  The strategies could change when the opponents (market) may be different, could be weaker (bear market) or stronger (bull market) opponents, which one would adjust the strategies accordingly.

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So, knowing the similarities and differences of poker game and investing (stock, property, etc), we understand that we could have the special edges or unfair advantage like Casino (more than 51% winning rate) if we know how to position Optimism + FA + TA + PA, aligning with own unique personality.