Thread by @techlunatic

Outside every small gold-smith's workshop, you'll find multiple people sifting through the wet waste in small metal pans.

When I was a small boi, I used to think these were cleaning agents employed by the shopkeeper. I was told that these people were..

..people were in fact there on their own volition. So the smol boi in me concluded that they were 'freelance cleaners' of sorts. Maybe the gold-smith would pay them later out of good will. Apparently they were sifting the gutters in the hopes of..

..hopes of finding small gold filings that may have chipped off while the gold-smith was working on making the ornaments

"Quite interesting", the smol boi in me I thought "free money, no investment other than the metal plate, no risk, just sift the dirt and catch the gold"

But,

..none of these 'freelance cleaners' seemed to look awfully well off, so I enquired, how frequently do they find these small gold flakes and what do they do with it?

I was told that...

..that, they only found the gold flakes infrequently, but since their cost of living was low, they could subsist on it. "Must make sense for them", I thought.."otherwise why would be doing it day in and day out for years"

So I asked one of them..

"..kuch mila" (any luck today?)
"abhi tak nahi" (not yet..)

"Pichle mahine mila hoga?" (maybe, last month?)
"nahi..mere chacha ko pichle saal mila tha" (uncle found last year)

Almost everyone relayed the same story, so..

..so it seems that since hearing the story of this lucky uncle, an entire generation was in the gutters searching for their golden destiny there.

So I asked the gold-smith, don't you mind it, in principle, that people search and keep your gold flakes?

He said..

"I don't mind. When any of them finds a small piece of scrap gold, he sells it back to me for a few bucks. The flakes inevitably fall of while working on the ornaments, I consider it a rounding off error and buy it back at a fractional cost. A procedural cost of doing business"..

And so it goes with stock trading. An FII with 5000cr in pension funds buys an asset from a DII with a similar stature. On the day the trade is executed on the open market, the ticker fluctuates up and down due to the buy-sell transactions. And..

..Intraday traders watch that 1% volatility and get in with their sifting pans in the hope of catching a few scraps. Not realizing that 5000cr worth of securities have changed hands. What they got from entering at 9:30 and exiting at 3:30 were mere scraps. Then they..

..they take home the 500rs earned that day and declare themselves winners, open trading classes, Whatsapp groups Telegram channels, to teach others how to make it big, like they did. And more people jump in the gutter with their own sifting pans..

The folklore of one random incident where someone struck gold & made 5% intraday becomes the default sales pitch for an intraday trader's job description. It becomes sufficient incentive to become a scavenger instead of a participant, when you could just as well be a participant.

If you have a basic education, can read and write, do basic math, then you can read balance sheets and become a stake holder in businesses by investing in them. There's no need to get out there at 9:30 every morning with a small pan in your hands.

Go with a bucket, once a year; Buy the gold, not the scraps. 🙏