It's a waste of time to debate this topic any more. Nutty is right of course, ignoring transaction costs. But Darvas had the right idea, the Markets are Las Vegas II, or whatever. And THAT'S what matters.
wealth is created from nothing in a stock. you make some things called shared and someone pays money to them for you. Theoretically, you don't care if the price of the share goes up or down from there because it cost you nothing to make the shares (again, theoretically, b/c of course u give up "ownership" of the company but that's irrelevant to this discussion). I.e when you have an IPO, and the stock opens at $100, the people that sold the IPO (original investors) made $100 a share. The people that bought the shares have made 0$. futures contracts are NEVER "created". they are either sold or bought. i dunno why this zero sum thing is hard for people to understand.....
I hate to throw a monkey wrench in this 3 year old thread, HOWEVER, one could debate that even futures isn't zero sum for all the participants (it is for traders). The purpose of the markets is for commercial hedging, so in so far as hedging adds to a commercial interests' efficiency, it creates wealth.
Hey I still have my MCD stock and get y $19 every now and then. It's great. Cajun Sniper - Co-Admin PureTick.com
I don't like to think of wealth as a numerical value but as a comparative value, although we use that numerical number to compare. But has wealth actually increased through technology and innovation or has it only lowered the value of assets? Are people wealthier now then 50 years ago? If 100% of the population has the same wealth, would anyone be wealthy at all, or just average? In order for the zero sum concept to be false you would have to assume that the value of equity could only go up, which isn't true, if it were the price would be infinity.
Zero sum == your win is somebody's loss. in the real world...your profit is somebody profit==transaction actually takes place. only 5% of wall street volume is real transaction. there is actually real investor or commodity buyer or seller of oil in the volume. only 5%of buyer will take delivery of gold and oil. it's not theory it's wall street casino,. [ QUOTE]Quote from adrock1795: I don't like to think of wealth as a numerical value but as a comparative value, although we use that numerical number to compare. But has wealth actually increased through technology and innovation or has it only lowered the value of assets? Are people wealthier now then 50 years ago? If 100% of the population has the same wealth, would anyone be wealthy at all, or just average? In order for the zero sum concept to be false you would have to assume that the value of equity could only go up, which isn't true, if it were the price would be infinity. [/QUOTE]
investors in wall street casino is a minority of 5% of volume. wall street brokers/market makers traders cannot support itself if it relied on commissions from real investors. you can't make a living on commissions from real investors who buy and hold and collect dividends.
ZERO SUM?!?!?!??!?!?!? fuck that, how does one zero-out innovation? the whole, every buyer has a seller argument is rubbish. It's quite possible, and is often the case ... the seller/buyer, buyer/seller both made/lost Let's say, a train carrying nuclear waste blows up and decimates a region of the country ... Who Wins!? Let's say, Cancer is cured, Who Losses!? Zero-Sum is antiquated, and wrong (Except of course in the options market ... where my sum is always less than zero)