How big is the risk to the person is related to how much the person is risking with respect to his total networth. As for sky diving, I will never do it personally. It's a matter of perspective. I see mostly risks but negligible monetary returns in sky diving. It's unnecessary risk to me. It's a have-risk-no-gain dumb activity to me. LOL.
On the flip side you can’t know until you tried. The same logic would have kept people from gambling their nut into something that provides 1000 fold. Ya just don’t know which risk/idea/concept will produce the 1000 fold f&&k ya money. Which is counter to what really counts but that’s another thread.
lol it's an extension of the argument, where 'life experience reward' replaces 'financial reward'... actually generally speaking if you step out of your apartment to do anything fun usually the risk goes up lol.... and in many cases the fun factor does increase proportionally with risk, like I am gonna ride my dirt bike this afternoon and I can't wait till I am 70 to do it lol.
Be careful and take care. Have fun taking "unnecessary risks". LOL. No right or wrong. Just enjoy yourself having fun
Have to take the risks when younger, you risk getting right degree at right school, risk finding the right woman to stand at your side, get far many more opportunities when younger than older. I am older at 62yo, opportunities for me is what I start/build and not offered like when you are 25, when older your hands shake from meds so starting to day trade very few have physical ability to do so, certainly DO NOT have capacity of memory. Until you get to the age -you have no clue of what you are writing about. It is far better to crash and burn several times when younger than when you in your retirement years. But I am happy I did it right, learned long term first, then 8 years later learning/losing in intraday trading. I think being younger allowed me to overcome all the ugly mental aspects you learn about yourself when you can't find how to overcome lack of knowledge trading pieces of a day. When younger you are fast and hungry, when you older you can't get to the bathroom fast enough and you think about lunch. Life is not about "WHAT IF'S" considering most retire with not much in retirement accounts, life is about dying and the friends you have made through the years.
Here's the thing, you could do 50/50, 75/25 or 90/10 in terms of allocating between passive investing ("guaranteed" compounding) and trading. If you turn out yet another Padutrader, at least you got a different part of portfolio that compounded for all these years.* * Yeah, assuming the future will be the same as the past, particularly w.r.t. to a particular nation's stock market performance is a big if. That said, assuming upcoming high tech (particularly robotics/removal of humans from work) is going to add massive wealth coming decades isn't unreasonable. Not intending to write a longer post, obviously there are much better pieces written on the topic than anything in this thread. However, I guess the purpose of dozu888 is simply to make new enthusiastic young members stop and think about what they're doing.
Risk taking is a matter of knowledge. I see young guys trading with an analytical approach, API development, and less of a naive approach than their previous generation about the markets. They had access to the internet since they were born (almost) and took advantage of all the free knowledge out there while many are self-taught (including coding). The OP assumes that the risk taker is a young trader who saved $25K, and goes "all in". That is reckless, and I agree it should be avoided. But, many do not think this way. In fact, many saw how their parents lost their life savings in 2008 and are very wary in their approach. In my opinion, the new generation is self-directed in everything. They are not all "To the Moon" coin traders. If there is an age that people should take risks, is precisely when they are young. To argue against that because of QQQs is not relevant. Risk-taking evolves our mind, and part of falling on your face and recovering is what will lead to the new leaders and innovators of tomorrow. Look at all the innovation around us, it is all as a result of someone taking risks. If they waited to take the chance when they were 70, I would have a "faster horse" not a car.