But that aside, sure, I was entirely wrong of the avenue through which it's doomed. If you think it being bid up irrationally is a success...well what can I say. You're fundamentally and by your own admission a leecher, what you try to do is trade in and out of positions for some sort of daily profit. My point of view is aligned with a much larger thing than that, with much longer term goals. The relative discrepancy of balances held perhaps excuses your holding your particular point of view, but it does not excuse trying to pass it for some sort of universal, which it is not.
I have no problem with you (or anyone else for that matter) making however much daytrading whatever they please, but please try and understand that finance != speculation. Finance = resource allocation.
I didn't address this part. Firstly at no stage have I claimed the current ASICMINER price is justified - whether it is or not depends largely on what your expectations are. I'd be fascinated to see you compare, say, ASICMINER to S.MPOE based on current and projected future P/E or similar - but I fear somewher in there'd be a "*10 because it's listed on MPEx".
On what I do you're partly correct - though trading in and out of positions isn't really my thing in the way it applies to typical day-trading. I'm not at all interested in trying to find short-term movements of a few percent or precisely time when a bubble bursts etc - as those things are hard to do and not actually all that profitable.
Leeching is a harsh term - but not entirely inaccurate. What I try to do is redistribute wealth from the stupid (most other people) to the less stupid (myself) - I'm very explictly profiting from other users of the market rather than from the securities themselves. Which is, as it happens, the business model of all the companies listed on MPEx.
S.DICE- Redistribution from the stupid (those who play -EV games) to the less stupid (those who back the house).
S.BBET - Redistribution from the stupid (those who are wrong) to the less stupid (those who are right).
S.MPOE - Options trading is rather obviously redistribution. Exchange fees profit from the users not the securities.
S.MG - Looks like the whole basis of the game economy is redistribution of wealth.
Yet somehow when ALL you do is redistribute wealth (not create it) that's finance - but when I do it it's not. If the argument is that you create wealth by giving returns to your investors then I do that too.
Finance = resource allocation? That's precisely what I do - (re)allocate resources from others to myself and my investors. Which, as it happens, is precisely what you do. That speculation happens to be (one of) my area of business is irrelevant. Much of what I do is very clearly finance - for example the management of currency exposure by using bonds issued in a different currency to offet assets against liabilites removing exchange-rate exposure (and, at the same time, leveraging capital).
Or look at DMS - that's pretty much pure finance employed to create a set of derivatives that allow both speculators AND investors to trade both sides of a pseudo-PMB.
Speculation and finance aren't mutually exclusive any more than gambling and finance are exclusive.
Holding more money doesn't make you right - it just makes it worse if you get it wrong. Bigger isn't necessarily better.