#thomasjefferson — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #thomasjefferson, aggregated by home.social.
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“Wall Street sells stocks and bonds, but what it really peddles is hope”*…
sourceOver the last several decades retail investors had been eclipsed in the stock market by institutions (e.g., pension funds). But COVID and the economic environment that surrounded started a trend that is reversing that polarity. Retail investors now account for roughly 30% of daily US equity volume, according to Goldman Sachs. Their stock trading in May of this year ran 10% above the previous record, set during the January 2021 meme-stock frenzy, and June set another all time high.
Much of that growth has come from the individuals known as day traders.” And while for the last 18 months or so, institutional investors have been cautious, often underweight, under-levered and short of conviction, these active amateurs in the retail crowd did the opposite, buying the dips, riding momentum strategies, and adding leverage. Retail investors tend to follow the herd, as can be seen in the surge in popularity – and valuations – of meme stocks and artificial intelligence stocks in recent years.
While historical performance is no guarantee of future results, history is not encouraging. The most “generous” reputable study your correspondent could find suggested that roughly 20% of day traders were at least marginally profitable; the balance lost money. Other studies suggest that 95-97% of all day traders lose money.
But as Simone Foxman reports, money is not all that they lose…
Surging retail trading isn’t just transforming markets; it’s also highly correlated with demoralization in young men, according to a new study.
One-quarter of men aged 18-29 said they trade stocks daily, and almost two-thirds of them (64%) report feeling like failures, according to a study of 2,000 men published Wednesday by the Institute for Family Studies, a pro-marriage think tank. The findings were strikingly similar to outcomes among men who gamble: Of the 23% of young men who said they gambled daily, including on sports and events, 66% reported similar angst, according to survey, which asked the young men a variety of questions about their personal behaviors and outlooks. Daily fantasy sports and pornography use were similarly correlated to feelings of failure, the survey found.
The struggles of young men are generating growing alarm among academics, pundits and billionaires. They warn that men are lagging in education and employment, gambling with their financial health on sports or event betting platforms and facing mental health crises.
At the same time, the line between gambling and investing has been blurred. Stock volumes from retail investors have doubled over the past 15 years, and day traders have driven record options volume. Now platforms like Robinhood Markets Inc. and Interactive Brokers Group are trying to capitalize on interest from Gen Z by also offering event-betting alongside stock-trading.
Some research suggests young people have embraced risky financial behaviors to try to generate returns in a world where homeownership and other markers of financial success are out of reach. Eighty percent of Gen Z investors said they’d invested or considered investing in stocks, options, crypto or prediction markets because they feel financially behind and see these investments as better tools to meet their financial goals, according to a Northwestern Mutual study.
The IFS researchers hypothesized that day trading, gambling, playing fantasy sports and porn use — among other activities — may be both coping mechanisms for dejection, stress and loneliness and also exacerbate them. Young men who engaged in these activities less than daily were about half as likely to report feelings of demoralization.
Overall, 42% of survey respondents said the statement “all in all, I am inclined to think that I am a failure,” described them very or somewhat well. This feeling was particularly strong among men without college degrees and those who were neither employed nor in school.
A quarter of participants said they felt lonely all of the time, while 30% expressed feeling that way some of the time.
The study also found disillusionment with the American dream, even as young men fostered high hopes for the future. Seven in ten respondents said that success is more a matter of who you know than ability or hard work, but 84% still said they had ambitious plans for their futures.
Further to the passing reference to “event-betting” above, we should note that prediction markets, while smaller than retail investing (at least for now), are growing explosively. Like day-trading, prediction markets are pitched in the language of empowerment and democratization. The former involves stocks and bonds, while the latter sells “event contracts“; but they share the same user base, the same psychological architecture, and the same uncomfortable gap between how they are marketed and what they actually deliver… so seem likely to contribute to the issues unpacked above.
Risky business: “Some 64% of Young Men Day Trading Stocks Feel Like Failures” (or here) from @simonefoxman.bsky.social in @bloomberg.com.
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As we parse symptoms and diseases, we might recall that it was on this date in 1966 that the U.S. Treasury Department, citing a lack of demand, ceased production of the $2 bill, which had been around in various forms since 1862. The (redesigned) denomination, featuring a portrait of Thomas Jefferson, was reintroduced in 1976… though readers will be forgiven if they mistakenly thought that “the deuce” was still retired: so few are in circulation that they are rarely encountered.
The first $2 bill, a Legal Tender Note (United States Note) with a portrait of Alexander Hamilton in profile view- in contrast to the familiar portrait in use on the $10 bill since 1928 (source) #addiction #AlexanderHamilton #culture #currency #dayTrading #Depression #finance #history #investment #loneliness #predictionMarkets #Psychology #retailInvesting #stocks #ThomasJefferson #twoDollarBill #USTreasury -
𝑵𝒆𝒅 𝑩𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒉𝒂𝒘𝒌: 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝑨𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂 - 𝑪𝒉 7: 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒆𝒍𝒖𝒈𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒍𝒆𝒓 𝑪𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒊𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒎: 𝑫𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒄𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑫𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑬𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒚 𝑹𝒆𝒑𝒖𝒃𝒍𝒊𝒄
Full video, glossary, and more on the website.Reading Guides on Waywords, one chapter and reflection video about every two weeks.
https://waywordsstudio.com/project/blackhawk-rediscovery-of-america/#democracy #history #literacy #indigenoushistory #constitution #thomasjefferson #manifestdestiny
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The Roaring Twenties
There are decades that become famous for what happened during them.And there are decades that become famous for what people later decided they had meant. The 1920s belong to the second category.We know how the story ends. In October 1929, the American stock market collapsed. The Great Depression followed. The prosperity of the decade gave way to unemployment, bank failures, political crisis, and social hardship. The New Deal transformed the relationship between the federal government and the […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/29/the-roaring-twenties/
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Peer AI Review
The Gazette Has Been Reviewed — And We Have Answered The Gazette has completed its first independent AI peer review. From the beginning, we wanted the project to be more than a collection of historical articles. Our Manifesto makes a simple promise: readers should be able to follow the road from our conclusions back to the evidence and the documents behind them. So we decided to test the project from the outside. We created a standardized AI Peer Review Prompt and gave it to independent […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/28/peer-ai-review/
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A Guide to the Gazette articles 01~50
A Reading Guide Through American History: Part I — Before the United States1. Before the United States, There Were Neither United nor StatesExplores the political reality of North America before 1776, showing that neither the United States nor a unified American nation yet existed.2. What Did Independence Mean in 1776?Examines the Declaration of Independence within its historical context, separating what it proclaimed from what later generations came to associate with it.3. The […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/26/a-guide-to-the-gazette-articles-0150/
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The End of the Old World
I. A World That Seemed PermanentFor generations, the political map of the world appeared remarkably stable.Empires dominated continents.Kings and emperors ruled vast populations.Colonial possessions stretched across oceans.International politics revolved around a handful of great powers whose existence seemed as permanent as mountains or rivers. "Some centuries end not with a date on the calendar, but with the disappearance of the world that created them." The United States had grown inside […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/26/the-end-of-the-old-world/
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Wilson’s Impossible Peace
I. A Peace Unlike Any BeforeWhen the guns finally fell silent in November 1918, Europe faced a problem unlike any it had known before.Previous wars had usually ended with negotiated settlements between surviving monarchs. Borders shifted. Reparations were paid. Armies returned home. "Some victories end wars. Others attempt to end war itself." This time, the foundations of the old order had collapsed.Millions had died.Entire regions had been devastated.Governments struggled to maintain […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/25/wilsons-impossible-peace/
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The Canal Between Two Oceans
I. A Dream Older Than the RepublicLong before the United States existed, sailors understood the problem.The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated by only a narrow strip of land, yet ships traveling between them faced journeys measured in months rather than days. "Some nations build roads. Some build railroads. A few build structures that permanently alter the geography of the world." After Vasco Núñez de Balboa first reached the Pacific Ocean in 1513, Spanish officials immediately […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/24/the-canal-between-two-oceans/
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The Progressive President
I. A Republic Outgrows Its InstitutionsBy the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States had become something its founders had never imagined.The frontier had largely disappeared. Railroads connected the continent. Steel framed the skylines of rapidly growing cities. Industrial corporations employed hundreds of thousands of workers. Wall Street had become the financial heart of the nation's economy. The republic had become larger, wealthier, and more complex than ever before.Yet […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/23/the-progressive-president/
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When America Crossed the Ocean
I. The Republic Facing InwardFor more than a century after independence, the United States had been occupied with itself.Its greatest questions lay within its own borders.How could a republic survive? How could a continent be connected? How could millions of immigrants become one nation?Railroads crossed the wilderness. Factories transformed raw materials into steel. Cities rose where forests had stood only decades before.Even the Civil War, devastating as it was, remained an internal […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/22/when-america-crossed-the-ocean/
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"In May 1818, #MordecaiManuelNoah, a prominent #Jew of his time and a member of the #Madison administration, delivered a discourse on #Jewish #history on the occasion of a #synagogue consecration. One man read #Noah’s words with interest, and took pen to paper to say so.
“Your sect by its sufferings has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal spirit of #religious #intolerance,” the correspondent noted, in elegant cursive. “Our laws have applied the only antidote to this vice, protecting our religious, as they do our civil, rights by putting them all on equal footing. But more remains to be done, for although we are free by the law, we are not so in practice.”
The letter’s author was #ThomasJefferson. 200 years later, there’s still work to do.
The Jefferson letter is one of 75 objects on view at All We Have Standing Between Us: 250 Years of Jews and #American #Democracy, the American Jewish #Historical Society’s new exhibit at the Center for #JewishHistory."
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The Rise of Wall Street
I. A Street That Built NothingThere was nothing remarkable about Wall Street itself.It produced no steel. It laid no railroad. It harvested no wheat.No ships were built there, no coal was mined, and no bridges rose from its pavements.Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, decisions made on a few blocks of lower Manhattan increasingly determined which railroads would be built, which factories would expand, which companies would survive, and which industries would disappear.This […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/20/the-rise-of-wall-street/
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The Man Who Financed America
Industrial revolutions are often remembered through machines.Steam engines. Railroads. Steel mills. Factories.Yet machines alone never built a modern economy.Every railroad required investors long before it carried passengers.Every steel mill demanded capital years before it produced its first beam.Every bridge, dock, factory, and warehouse existed first as a financial commitment. The Industrial Republic needed more than engineers. It needed people capable of organizing money on a scale […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/19/the-man-who-financed-america/
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Building with Steel
No civilization is remembered only by its ideas.It is remembered by what it builds.Stone gives shape to ancient empires.Brick defines medieval cities.Concrete transforms the twentieth century. For the United States of the late nineteenth century, that material was steel Not because steel had never existed before.But because, for the first time in history, it became abundant enough to shape an entire nation.The Industrial Republic did not simply need more steel.It needed steel that ordinary […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/19/building-with-steel/
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The Man Who Standardized Industry
America did not become an industrial nation simply because it discovered oil. Nor because it possessed iron ore. Nor because it had ambitious entrepreneurs willing to invest enormous fortunes. Natural resources existed elsewhere. Factories had already transformed Britain. Railroads crossed Europe long before they connected the American continent. What made the United States different was not merely its industrial growth.It was its ability to organize industrial growth. By the 1870s, the […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/19/the-man-who-standardized-industry/
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The Trusts and the Titans
The United States did not invent wealth during the nineteenth century.Nor did it invent industry.Factories had long transformed Britain. Banks had financed empires for centuries. Merchant houses had accumulated fortunes long before the American Republic existed.What America did create was something different. It created an economy so vast that no individual business could easily govern it. The railroads connected the continent.Steel transformed construction.Millions of immigrants filled […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/18/the-trusts-and-the-titans/
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The Gilded Age
When later generations looked back upon the closing decades of the nineteenth century, they did not call them the Golden Age. They called them the Gilded Age The distinction mattered.Gold is solid.Gilding is only a thin surface laid over something else. The phrase entered American history through the novel The Gilded Age, published in 1873 by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. It was intended as satire, yet it became something greater. Historians, economists, and politicians eventually […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/17/the-gilded-age/
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The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
-- Thomas Jefferson⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #ThomasJefferson #Government #Resistance
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Guangxi #China #LiRiver #LiJiang #TowerKarst #Geology
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The Immigrants Who Built the Cities
Between roughly 1865 and the close of the nineteenth century, the United States experienced one of the greatest movements of people in modern history. Millions crossed the Atlantic Millions crossed the Atlantic, not as conquerors or adventurers, but as workers, families, craftsmen, laborers, and dreamers. They did not arrive to change the course of American history. They came because history had already changed the course of theirs. The Civil War had preserved the Union, and the industrial […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/16/the-immigrants-who-built-the-cities/
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The Age of Steel
The nineteenth century is often remembered through the names of remarkable individuals. Lincoln preserved the Union.Carnegie built an industrial empire.Rockefeller transformed oil.Edison electrified cities. Yet before any of these men could reshape America, something more fundamental had already changed. The nation learned to produce steel. That transformation was neither dramatic nor celebrated at first. It did not begin with speeches, elections, or battles. It began inside […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/15/the-age-of-steel/
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The Railroads That Built America
There are moments in history when a nation changes without a revolution, without a new constitution, and without a single decisive battle.The transformation comes quietly.A line appears across an empty landscape.Then another. Soon the lines connect towns, rivers, forests, mountains, and finally oceans. What was once a collection of distant places becomes something entirely different.By the end of the nineteenth century, Americans often spoke of the railroad as the greatest invention of […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/13/the-railroads-that-built-america/
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#ThomasJefferson wrote to his friend, the nonconformist minister Richard Price, that he considered Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Isaac Newton “the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical & Moral sciences.”
https://reformedjournal.com/2020/05/20/whos-afraid-of-the-enlightenment/ -
White people were outnumbered 6 to 1 around colonial Albermarle County in Virginia, where #ThomasJefferson was raised.
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Reconstruction The Unfinished Peace
In April 1865, the Civil War ended.After four years of bloodshed, the Confederate armies laid down their arms. Richmond had fallen. General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. The Union had survived.For millions of Americans, the nightmare seemed to be over.In reality, the hardest work had only begun. Winning a war and rebuilding a nation are not the same task. The United States had preserved its Constitution, abolished slavery, and prevented permanent division. Yet none of […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/12/reconstruction-the-unfinished-peace/
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The President Who Saved the Union
By the time Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office on March 4, 1861, the United States had already begun to disappear. Seven Southern states had declared secession.A new government had been established in Montgomery.Federal authority existed only where it could still be enforced.The Constitution remained unchanged.The nation it governed did not. When the United States began to fall apart, Abraham Lincoln inherited not a government, but a national crisis No previous American president had […]https://gotunitedstates.wordpress.com/2026/07/11/the-president-who-saved-the-union/
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Thomas Jefferson coined a hip and funny phrase for abrupt goodbyes that still holds up today
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Discrimination Beyond Marriage
By CAP Action War Room Despite Victory At The Supreme Court, Discrimination Remains Beyond Marriage It has been less than two weeks since the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, granting same-sex couples the freedom to marry nationwide. But despite our progress on marriage equality, LGBT discrimination persists. In 28 states, same-sex couples can now be legally married one day, and then legally fired from their jobs, evicted from their homes, denied […]