mug's

The efficient-markets hypothesis may not be in the best of odors these days, but its signature piece of advice is as good as ever: Stock trading is a mug's game.

Temporary Sanity in Insider-Trading Law Jr. Holman W. Jenkins 2011

So, yeah, they're pretty clearly trying to co-opt established writers 'blogs and journals to draw in any aspiring writers in their readership (s) who might be naive enough to buy into their mug's game.

Do Not Submit to Narrative Magazine Hal Duncan 2009

And 80% of the variation on the return on a truly diversified portfolio results from the * category* of investments one chooses (such as stocks, bonds, etc.) rather than one's particular investments within a category (e.g. picking individual stocks within the stock market is a mug's game, certainly for amateurs, even for many professionals as the managed funds show).

Financial Crime, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

This may change at a moment's notice: Guessing currency markets is a mug's game.

Reasoning behind buying international funds doubtful 2010

Chasing the right is a mug's game -- easy to do but impossible for progressives to win.

David Coates: The Danger of Losing the Plot So Early in the Play David Coates 2011

Investing among them also lets one be a "fundamental" investor who keeps costs down without playing the mug's game of trying be beat a market from the inside (by picking this particular stock or bond or fund over that one).

Financial Crime, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

You can't win with these people, lad, and trying to talk sense to them is a mug's game.

TOC: The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF edited by Mike Ashley 2009

There's no fairytale island here; this is 70s London and Borribles are thieving little street oiks, runaways who've decided that growing up is a mug's game and they're just not going to bother.

MIND MELD: What Book Introduced You to Fantasy? 2009

The metaphysics of morality, though, is a mug's game, so we'll all be arbitrarily choosing the mixture of the three approaches that most comports with what we feel (yes feel, not think) is right.

Empiricism and Dogma, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

Chasing the right is a mug's game -- easy to do but impossible for progressives to win.

David Coates: The Danger of Losing the Plot So Early in the Play David Coates 2011