> Financial speculation is parasitic and socially harmful Well, I can tell you from personal experience that mom-and-pop investors can't really compete with co

> Financial speculation is parasitic and socially harmful Well, I can tell you from personal experience that mom-and-pop investors can't really compete with co-located HFT algorithms, and that they do seem to shift wealth further into the hands of wealthy investors (who can afford these systems). The industry did leave a bad taste in my mouth, but I feel they perform an important stabilizing function within the markets. These algorithms tend to be based on massive amounts of historical data, so one can think of them as hyper-rational. I feel (without anything to back it up, of course), they can guard against markets going into emotion-driven feedback loops. That said, I am a supporter of alternatives such as the Long Term Stock Exchange (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Stock_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Stock_Exchange).