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An article full of children's words: 'Lost', 'Won', 'Players', 'Game', .. Nobody will ever convince me that everything is alright with this type of trading, wh

An article full of children's words: 'Lost', 'Won', 'Players', 'Game', .. Nobody will ever convince me that everything is alright with this type of trading, where lottery-style winnings are praised. It's not even about being a shareholder in a company you identify with, it's just about gambling at high stakes. It just shouldn't be this easy to make or lose money. It's the same disregard of reality that caused the investment banks to tumble. How will we ever get back to sane investments with good intent for the businesses in question?

borism 16y ago
well. what do you propose?
- derefr 16y ago
  The easiest way to eliminate HFT in particular would be to quantize the trading day, so that trades don't occur "when they occur," but rather are rounded to some integer-valued timestep. It seems to me, though, that most of the problem with the stock market is in its secondary products—indeces, futures, etc.—and that the simplest thing to do would be to ban the sale or creation of any tradable commodities linked to a stock's value.
  - borism 16y ago
    the simplest thing to do would be to ban the sale or creation of any tradable commodities linked to a stock's value this sentence doesn't make any sense to me
    - derefr 16y ago
      It means "ban index funds, stock futures markets, hedge funds, and every other imaginable thing that is basically a service provided by a proxy who buys a set of stocks and then gives you money if they do certain things." Stocks themselves represent interest in the company's financial welfare; these other things are abstractions, and the people who buy them are too many steps away from the actual company to care what it does, even though, by purchasing those abstractions, they are indirectly affecting those companies.
- some1else 16y ago
  I'm afraid I don't have a superior alternative to current system. After all, the more regulations are placed, the less free the market is.. Who knows? Maybe one day, when a civilization is born again, people will have the knowledge to see that the currency is something that represents value and that there's something inherently wrong with making money out of money. We have to deal with things as they are for the time being though. I just can't stand it when this disconnect between the real world and capitalism burns down decent companies and results in millions of people on the fringe of social security being pushed off the cliff. Why is it we take the few success stories, parade them, and ignore the cruel reality of all the victims? Maybe I don't have a solution, but we have to keep pointing out the flaws, otherwise people will simply adjust to a more and more twisted environment. I don't want to compare apples to oranges, but remember that kingdoms were overthrown because of 10% tax (among other things of course) during the Medieval times. The lion share the state takes these days hardly matches my mother's benefits now that she's being fired after thirty years of manual labour, for a company that had their capital in the wrong markets. So.. I guess she's still better off, with running water and electricity in tact. But have we done anything to pull the developing world out of it's misery, or isn't it worse off than the farmers in Medieval Europe, who at least had their fertile land to depend on? We have to maintain our perpective on the negative effects of capitalism, whether or not there is a better solution at hand, so we can perhaps some day through criticism, constructive criticism and brilliant innovations evolve this system before it devolves us to a lesser kind. I'll start by voting suggestions in this thread by people more educated than me in the area of finance. Somehow, ideas tend to bubble up when they're shared and endorsed.
  - some1else 16y ago
    I respect other peoples right to have a different opinion. However, I'd feel a lot better if opposing views were expressed in comments, not by merely voting down a comment. It's kind of hard for me to even distinguish which part of the comment was considered unworthy of this message board :-)
- ruang 16y ago
  A transaction tax for every trade. The money could be used to fund future bailouts of the financial firms. This idea courtesy of Mark Cuban.

borism 16y ago

well. what do you propose?

derefr 16y ago
The easiest way to eliminate HFT in particular would be to quantize the trading day, so that trades don't occur "when they occur," but rather are rounded to some integer-valued timestep. It seems to me, though, that most of the problem with the stock market is in its secondary products—indeces, futures, etc.—and that the simplest thing to do would be to ban the sale or creation of any tradable commodities linked to a stock's value.
- borism 16y ago
  the simplest thing to do would be to ban the sale or creation of any tradable commodities linked to a stock's value this sentence doesn't make any sense to me
  - derefr 16y ago
    It means "ban index funds, stock futures markets, hedge funds, and every other imaginable thing that is basically a service provided by a proxy who buys a set of stocks and then gives you money if they do certain things." Stocks themselves represent interest in the company's financial welfare; these other things are abstractions, and the people who buy them are too many steps away from the actual company to care what it does, even though, by purchasing those abstractions, they are indirectly affecting those companies.
some1else 16y ago
I'm afraid I don't have a superior alternative to current system. After all, the more regulations are placed, the less free the market is.. Who knows? Maybe one day, when a civilization is born again, people will have the knowledge to see that the currency is something that represents value and that there's something inherently wrong with making money out of money. We have to deal with things as they are for the time being though. I just can't stand it when this disconnect between the real world and capitalism burns down decent companies and results in millions of people on the fringe of social security being pushed off the cliff. Why is it we take the few success stories, parade them, and ignore the cruel reality of all the victims? Maybe I don't have a solution, but we have to keep pointing out the flaws, otherwise people will simply adjust to a more and more twisted environment. I don't want to compare apples to oranges, but remember that kingdoms were overthrown because of 10% tax (among other things of course) during the Medieval times. The lion share the state takes these days hardly matches my mother's benefits now that she's being fired after thirty years of manual labour, for a company that had their capital in the wrong markets. So.. I guess she's still better off, with running water and electricity in tact. But have we done anything to pull the developing world out of it's misery, or isn't it worse off than the farmers in Medieval Europe, who at least had their fertile land to depend on? We have to maintain our perpective on the negative effects of capitalism, whether or not there is a better solution at hand, so we can perhaps some day through criticism, constructive criticism and brilliant innovations evolve this system before it devolves us to a lesser kind. I'll start by voting suggestions in this thread by people more educated than me in the area of finance. Somehow, ideas tend to bubble up when they're shared and endorsed.
- some1else 16y ago
  I respect other peoples right to have a different opinion. However, I'd feel a lot better if opposing views were expressed in comments, not by merely voting down a comment. It's kind of hard for me to even distinguish which part of the comment was considered unworthy of this message board :-)
ruang 16y ago
A transaction tax for every trade. The money could be used to fund future bailouts of the financial firms. This idea courtesy of Mark Cuban.