Now with the rest of us not privy to inside info or pre-emptively leveraging on the levers of power it is gambling. Horrific odds too as fundementals don't seem to mean a damned thing anymore. I litterally have better returns playing the known odds in scratch off tickets.
The richest idiots in the world run companies that have NO PROFIT. The companies that do churn a profit and seem to do well end up getting shorted to death. I used to make money in stocks - or at least knew enough to follow indicators to make money. There were idicators that basically told you when things were too hyped or too low.
The last time I made money was when the anti people attacked Disney and drove the stock price artifically low. Then it bounced right back when they moved on to thier next target (which seems to be smaller and smaller game companies with no public facing stock now .
But we never really recovered from 2008. The faded employee rights laminated poster at work still has the Federal Minimum wage at $7.25 last updated 2009. 13 years ago.
I think 2014-2016 was the final nail in the coffin on fundamentals working. We are overdue for a dose of reality. They can't keep the artifical JOY up forever. Last few years I've switched my investing money to mostly precious metals and CDs. They aren't going to make me huge gains, but those aren't going to drop 20-80% loss because the Empire gets butthurt someone did it better so they leverage shorts (which should be illegal) to choke a company to death. Space mining could have happened by now but they are choking NASA because I swear they found a Golden Nugget up there and they must maintain artifical scarcity.
yeah my own hypothesis is that wall street is using the post-Covid retail stock trading surge as cover to do all kinds of blatently illegal shit
also they now have algo trading to hide behind and go when something weird happens. and like everything else, total deregulation and decay of the rules making capacity of the Empire has allowed the stock market, Civilization Golden Wonder of the Capitalist World, to effectively become another grift
weird how legalized sports gambling and it's total domination of that entire space also perfectly synced up with this new market (also another great cover for fuckery)
obviously like you said it's not just post-2019/meme stock that created this mess it goes back to 2008 and further. it's just that has added this element of randomness and given the FTC the excuse of "welp it's just so many regular people fucking up the market so guess we can't do anything about it you want us to lock up 10 million robinhood grindset traders?" "honestly we'd love to lock everyone up but we need some of these people"
meanwhile the last of the wealth is exacted by the financial sector and any corporation that represents the national bougoinoise productive or extractive sector is slowly dismantled using the market (shorts, etc) as a weapon for private equity to swoop in, buy up, sell for parts, and move on
the private equity firms are the very thing creating their wealth from the pure grift.
love when capitalism eats itself. not sure if your solution is the correct one (metals, etc) but there's no conventional wisdom anymore. i mean at least that's based on a real physical value. i suppose investing in China or BRICS could be another but good luck if the U.S. decides to start it's economic war and you lose your investments
i just buy total market with a decent amount of bonds. I don't want anything to do with any of this shit but unfortunately in order to not die at work I have to play investor for any chance at a shred of retirement
There are ways to get returns reliably. The total US market increased through the great depression, the world wars, etc. In my mind, if your total market index fund loses significantly, you're in a brave new world where your USD isn't going to help you much either. The only reason the government does stuff today is to make that money line go up and make sure those companies get to burn through all the resources of the world with nothing to show for it without suffering financial consequences.
Individual stocks are gambling unless you have foresight like a member of congress knowing that the next round of patch notes is going to nerf a company really big.
The stock market is just gambling.
Prove me wrong.
It's just gambling for us. For politicians doing legal insider trading, it's a reliable source of wealth.
Does it count as gambling if you're the house?
Is it gambling you're the one setting the deck?
Now with the rest of us not privy to inside info or pre-emptively leveraging on the levers of power
it is gambling. Horrific odds too as fundementals don't seem to mean a damned thing anymore. I litterally have better returns playing the known odds in scratch off tickets.
The richest idiots in the world run companies that have NO PROFIT. The companies that do churn a profit and seem to do well end up getting shorted to death. I used to make money in stocks - or at least knew enough to follow indicators to make money. There were idicators that basically told you when things were too hyped or too low.
The last time I made money was when the anti
people attacked Disney and drove the stock price artifically low. Then it bounced right back when they moved on to thier next target (which seems to be smaller and smaller 
game companies with no public facing stock now 
.
But we never really recovered from 2008. The faded employee rights laminated poster at work still has the Federal Minimum wage at $7.25 last updated 2009. 13 years ago.
I think 2014-2016 was the final nail in the coffin on fundamentals working. We are overdue for a dose of reality. They can't keep the artifical JOY up forever. Last few years I've switched my investing money to mostly precious metals and CDs. They aren't going to make me huge gains, but those aren't going to drop 20-80% loss because the Empire gets butthurt someone did it better so they leverage shorts (which should be illegal) to choke a company to death. Space mining could have happened by now but they are choking NASA because I swear they found a Golden Nugget up there and they must maintain artifical scarcity.
hmm.
yeah my own hypothesis is that wall street is using the post-Covid retail stock trading surge as cover to do all kinds of blatently illegal shit
also they now have algo trading to hide behind and go
when something weird happens. and like everything else, total deregulation and decay of the rules making capacity of the Empire has allowed the stock market, Civilization Golden Wonder of the Capitalist World, to effectively become another grift
weird how legalized sports gambling and it's total domination of that entire space also perfectly synced up with this new market (also another great cover for fuckery)
obviously like you said it's not just post-2019/meme stock that created this mess it goes back to 2008 and further. it's just that has added this element of randomness and given the FTC the excuse of "welp it's just so many regular people fucking up the market so guess we can't do anything about it you want us to lock up 10 million robinhood grindset traders?"
"honestly we'd love to lock everyone up but we need some of these people"
meanwhile the last of the wealth is exacted by the financial sector and any corporation that represents the national bougoinoise productive or extractive sector is slowly dismantled using the market (shorts, etc) as a weapon for private equity to swoop in, buy up, sell for parts, and move on
the private equity firms are the very thing creating their wealth from the pure grift.
love when capitalism eats itself. not sure if your solution is the correct one (metals, etc) but there's no conventional wisdom anymore. i mean at least that's based on a real physical value. i suppose investing in China or BRICS could be another but good luck if the U.S. decides to start it's economic war and you lose your investments
Buy bonds in good companies, not stocks
what
i just buy total market with a decent amount of bonds. I don't want anything to do with any of this shit but unfortunately in order to not die at work I have to play investor for any chance at a shred of retirement
I meant ones with long term growth potential
There are ways to get returns reliably. The total US market increased through the great depression, the world wars, etc. In my mind, if your total market index fund loses significantly, you're in a brave new world where your USD isn't going to help you much either. The only reason the government does stuff today is to make that money line go up and make sure those companies get to burn through all the resources of the world with nothing to show for it without suffering financial consequences.
Individual stocks are gambling unless you have foresight like a member of congress knowing that the next round of patch notes is going to nerf a company really big.
It's not just gambling. Sometimes it's astrology.
When you are the ones weaving the future via laws and court cases you have power over you might as well bring out that 🔮
It's a measurement of rich asshole feelings at any given moment.