• Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    That is basically Schrodinger’s cat. If you don’t open the box, the cat is both dead or alive. So you “could” interpret “lost money” as lost net worth. But if you read it litterally, it wasn’t money. It was an asset. You couldn’t spend it and it doesn’t meet the definition of money. Poorer, I suppose, because you could borrow against that asset, but not as much as before.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      3 hours ago

      That is basically Schrodinger’s cat

      No, it’s not.

      Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment is about things where observing state will impact the state. That would maybe apply if we’re talking about something unique, like an ungraded collectible or one of a kind item (maybe Trump’s beard clippings?) where it cannot have a value until it is either graded or sold.

      Stocks have real-time valuations, and trades can happen in near real time. There’s no box for the cat to be in, it’s always observable.

      money

      Look up the definition. Here’s the second usage from Webster:

      2 a: wealth reckoned in terms of money

      And the legal definition, further down on the same page:

      2 a: assets or compensation in the form of or readily convertible into cash

      Stocks are absolutely readily convertible to cash, and I argue that less liquid investments like RE are as well (esp with those cash offer places). Basically, if there’s a market price for it and you can reasonably get that price, it counts.

      When my stocks go down, I may not have realized that loss yet from a tax perspective, but the amount of money I can readily convert to cash is reduced.