its only called a scam when money is lost. i like to think of it as an atm machine regardless of its intentions.
Read "Wall Street: The Other Las Vegas" by Nicholas Darvas. Then you'll know who the other players are in this game so you won't get scammed. MDT
On hindsight yes it is. I find it amusing some people base their arguments on hindsight. How old are you by the way? Nobody makes money from the markets in the long term because HE IS DEAD. Bill
Mercor is correct in that the indices suffer from "survivorship bias" - the dead companies are dropped from the index. But it is still a good snake-oil story... Though ....if you buy an index fund and wait until you are dead, maybe it would do ok...