It actually illuminates more than you might think. The market is mostly a zero sum game. When someone loses money, someone makes money, and vice versa.
Just think about it. I think the best way to lose a lot of money is to fall into scams. And avoiding scams is an important part of investing. It also tell you that scams can be profitable. So the next question is: how to scam and lose money doing it, which will hopefully put you back on the right track... or make you a really good scammer. Back to honest investing, losing a lot of money is not that trivial. It is easy to take risks but you can still get the occasional big payoff and if you think about ways of not getting that payoff, it is the same as thinking about how to get it, just with a different angle.
That kind of reverse thinking goes best when you pair it with regular thinking. That's a "meet in the middle" algorithm, kind of like solving a maze by going both forwards from the entrance and backwards from the exit.
Just think about it. I think the best way to lose a lot of money is to fall into scams. And avoiding scams is an important part of investing. It also tell you that scams can be profitable. So the next question is: how to scam and lose money doing it, which will hopefully put you back on the right track... or make you a really good scammer. Back to honest investing, losing a lot of money is not that trivial. It is easy to take risks but you can still get the occasional big payoff and if you think about ways of not getting that payoff, it is the same as thinking about how to get it, just with a different angle.
That kind of reverse thinking goes best when you pair it with regular thinking. That's a "meet in the middle" algorithm, kind of like solving a maze by going both forwards from the entrance and backwards from the exit.