I'd be interested in how many of those trades are regular trades and how many would be considered high frequency trading. Especially then versus now.

HA HA it's funny because stupid people wait until the stock market has already gone up which means it's somehow "safer" and then they biatch and moan when the stock market goes back down.

Yes, there's a random element to the movement of stock prices

But if you're going to call it a casino, at least understand that in this case, the odds are in your favor since by owning stock, you are the recipient of a slice of that company's earnings.

RumsfeldsReplacement: But if you're going to call it a casino, at least understand that in this case, the odds are in your favor since by owning stock, you are the recipient of a slice of that company's earnings.

My only complaint about the stock market as it is today is that people are forced into it through the 401k scam. People were convinced to give up a solid, material benefit in the form of their pension in the name of taking a second, part-time job as a stock analyst. Then, when they don't have enough to retire, people mock them for not planning ahead.

People shouldn't have to take on a second job as a stock trader to plan for retirement. If you want to, fine, but you shouldn't have to.

It is down because I decided to move some money from a few safe investments into a middling risk stock. I thought I saw a strong trend where the stock was bouncing between a ceiling and floor. Ya, so much for that floor. Sorry guys. All my fault.

RumsfeldsReplacement: HA HA it's funny because stupid people wait until the stock market has already gone up which means it's somehow "safer" and then they biatch and moan when the stock market goes back down.

Yes, there's a random element to the movement of stock prices

But if you're going to call it a casino, at least understand that in this case, the odds are in your favor since by owning stock, you are the recipient of a slice of that company's earnings.

If they pay dividends yes. if they don't you're hoping someone will pay you more for the stock later on than you did to buy it (speculating/gambling). In that case you aren't the recipient of anything except a yearly report.

I suspect much of the decline is due to the demise of day trading, as most day traders went bankrupt. Buy and hold. It's worked for me for decades. Nothing spectacular, but I've always come out well ahead of inflation, even after taxes.

Splinshints: RumsfeldsReplacement: But if you're going to call it a casino, at least understand that in this case, the odds are in your favor since by owning stock, you are the recipient of a slice of that company's earnings.

My only complaint about the stock market as it is today is that people are forced into it through the 401k scam. People were convinced to give up a solid, material benefit in the form of their pension in the name of taking a second, part-time job as a stock analyst. Then, when they don't have enough to retire, people mock them for not planning ahead.

People shouldn't have to take on a second job as a stock trader to plan for retirement. If you want to, fine, but you shouldn't have to.

You're not really a stock trader by investing in a 401k. You're required to invest in funds that pick the stocks for you. If you think stocks are too risky, or in the incomprehensible view of subby, 'less risky than casinos', invest in bond or money market funds.

And the alternative to defined contribution plans are defined benefit plans, which have been proven not to work, or at least failing to work enough that companies have realized they're a bad idea. Rather than make promises they might not be able to keep, companies are now offering defined contribution plans.

natazha: I suspect much of the decline is due to the demise of day trading, as most day traders went bankrupt. Buy and hold. It's worked for me for decades. Nothing spectacular, but I've always come out well ahead of inflation, even after taxes.

Amen. Maybe people finally figured out that brokers pushing the latest hot thing don't have their best interests in mind.

Stock trading is declining because the American Middle Class (the reason this Nation has been so economically stable in the past) is shrinking and folks (especially foreign investors) are beginning to realise that the American stock market isn't as stable and reliable as it used to be.

why is the middle class shrinking? because the Owners decided they didn't have enough wealth and began to ship good paying American middle class jobs to commie china for cheap labor.

there are other reasons, but this is a core reason.

ain't Freedom great??

High Frequency Trading and algorythmic trading have forced so many retail investors out of the market, and they wonder why volume is so pathetic?

The Plunge Protection Team has been so successful in keeping the market from crashing that they have at the same time destroyed faith in the legitimacy of the market.

Price Propaganda used to reign supreme ("hey the market went up today, that means we must all be better off!"), but people are catching on, and the proof (that is- the volume) is in the pudding.

Al Capone, explaining why he'd play the ponies but wouldn't invest a dime on Wall Street.

"It's a racket. Those stock market guys are crooked."

ZAZ: Fubini

"This time around, the stock market has many more players, including high-speed trading firms, which have recently come to account for over half of all stock market activity."

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why that hasn't been regulated, beyond people make a farkload, shiatton, holy balls that's an insanely huge lot of money doing it, so it's still legal.

natazha: I suspect much of the decline is due to the demise of day trading, as most day traders went bankrupt. Buy and hold. It's worked for me for decades. Nothing spectacular, but I've always come out well ahead of inflation, even after taxes.

Perhaps not so much "buy and hold" but more "buy, hold, and dollar cost average". Keep investing at regular intervals into broad market indicators, don't get swayed either way by daily/weekly/monthly gyrations, and you will do well. You might not hit a home run, but a since string of singles will get you close to the same result with much less risk.

When they finally close the book on America as a superpower, the last few years will be a big mark on how to fark up a good scam. Greed never works, but it's part of the American mindset: the fact that our worth comes solely from the acquisition of more and more wealth. We're so greedy that we'll upend the entire farking country simply to have a bigger number in a bank account. We don't even pay for the privilege of having the environment to make the money.

A few days ago on NPR was talk about why some people are dropping off the radar job-wise. While a lot of the talk from the right-wing about some big monolithic and inherently bad government has taken hold in our collective psyche, a lot of people are starting to figure American life out. And it's a scam, pure and simple: you give your life to work hard to get treated like shiat. We don't even get the basics of Europe, for fark's sake. We have to take out loans on shiat we don't even really need to catch up with our neighbors who are in the same position, then boast about how individualistic we are when we're just easily-bought rubes. The greatest con of the Republicans isn't that they managed to con people into voting themselves into poverty and shame, it's that they gave us the illusion that Americans have any sense of control in their lives. We have none. We're the typical house slaves who think they have it good but only because we look down on those who have it worse. And it's getting hard to ignore how bad off we are.

Our wealth is an illusion. Our reality is that we're all full of stress, paranoia, bad diets, and bullshiat. We're fed sodium-laced shiat, we're given products that are designed to fall apart, we are given shame to keep us from questioning wage fairness or exactly why morality is equal to bits of green paper, and exactly why we should feel bad that we can't live up to the insane and unrealistic standards that are 'held' by all of us but are really the marketing of old men with too much money and too much time. American life is hollow, jaded, and full of delusion.

The reason why nobody plays stocks and nobody buys houses and people are dropping out of the workforce is simple. People have caught on that America is a very empty place. We're lied to day and night, we're bullshiatted into wasting our lives in jobs that push us to produce but don't even come close to rewarding us, and extorted via debt into taking more demeaning jobs because we 'have' to work because of some bullshiat pioneering 'bootstraps' myth that is designed to make people who weren't born Mitt Romney into slave labor with delusions of grandeur.

Why aren't we playing the stock market? Because it's pointless. Why bother playing the game that we cannot win? And more Americans are realizing it. This isn't a depressive move by people who can't take the pressure, it's a move by people who realize what really matters in life, and that most of the stuff they've been sold throughout their lives DOES NOT MATTER. And armed with this knowledge makes American life very, very simple. And it makes people who benefit from free American slave labor very, very scared.

Guntram Shatterhand: When they finally close the book on America as a superpower, the last few years will be a big mark on how to fark up a good scam. Greed never works, but it's part of the American mindset: the fact that our worth comes solely from the acquisition of more and more wealth. We're so greedy that we'll upend the entire farking country simply to have a bigger number in a bank account. We don't even pay for the privilege of having the environment to make the money.

A few days ago on NPR was talk about why some people are dropping off the radar job-wise. While a lot of the talk from the right-wing about some big monolithic and inherently bad government has taken hold in our collective psyche, a lot of people are starting to figure American life out. And it's a scam, pure and simple: you give your life to work hard to get treated like shiat. We don't even get the basics of Europe, for fark's sake. We have to take out loans on shiat we don't even really need to catch up with our neighbors who are in the same position, then boast about how individualistic we are when we're just easily-bought rubes. The greatest con of the Republicans isn't that they managed to con people into voting themselves into poverty and shame, it's that they gave us the illusion that Americans have any sense of control in their lives. We have none. We're the typical house slaves who think they have it good but only because we look down on those who have it worse. And it's getting hard to ignore how bad off we are.

Our wealth is an illusion. Our reality is that we're all full of stress, paranoia, bad diets, and bullshiat. We're fed sodium-laced shiat, we're given products that are designed to fall apart, we are given shame to keep us from questioning wage fairness or exactly why morality is equal to bits of green paper, and exactly why we should feel bad that we can't live up to the insane and unrealistic standards that are 'held' by all of us but are really the marketing of old men with ...

Agreed.

wombatsrus: Perhaps not so much "buy and hold" but more "buy, hold, and dollar cost average". Keep investing at regular intervals into broad market indicators

You'll get killed with fees. Let's say you wanted to maintain a modest little portfolio of 5 stocks, and you had $200 a month to invest. At $5 per trade (which is pretty much the cheapest discount brokerage you'll get), you're spending $25 of those $200 every month in brokerage fees.

Your "investment" is already losing 12.5%, before the stock market even moves.

Even if you invest the entire $200 in a single mutual fund, you're still spending maybe $10 in fees, erasing any growth you might expect. On top of that, your portfolio may lose value.

Better to stick your cash in a sock. The stock market (even "discount" brokerages) is only for the rich, with a lot of money to invest all at once.

What I love is when your employer takes away your defined benefit pension and then 'sells' you on the idea that an 'enhanced 401k' is a BETTER option for you, that you'll come out ahead by having the flexibility to manage your own investments. What they're really saying is, 'professional money managers can't make it work anymore, but here, Joe Blow, YOU can do great things with it'.
Farking arseholes. Screw me by simply telling me you're gonna screw me, rather than insulting my intelligence by telling me it's good for me.

RumsfeldsReplacement: But if you're going to call it a casino, at least understand that in this case, the odds are in your favor since by owning stock, you are the recipient of a slice of that company's earnings.

How big a role do dividends play anymore? Isn't "income investing" a thing of the past?

Well the silver lining is that brokers like me are going bust and of course we all know by now brokers are de debil.

stiletto_the_wise: Even if you invest the entire $200 in a single mutual fund, you're still spending maybe $10 in fees, erasing any growth you might expect.

How so? If you're buying from your broker (e.g. buying Schwab funds from a Schwab account, Vanguard funds from a Vanguard account, etc.) there's almost never any fees for purchasing or selling shares.

I prefer the abstraction layer of index mutual funds or ETFs over directly investing in stocks. I'm not an expert and don't think that I can "beat the market" with some fancy investment strategy and I don't think I can "pick the winners".

Sure, my investments can lose value but with a well-balanced portfolio weakness in one sector (stocks, for example) are often balanced out by strength in another (e.g. bonds). Keeping the portfolio balanced and in line with one's investment goals even during market upsets can help too.

/slow and steady

pciszek: RumsfeldsReplacement: But if you're going to call it a casino, at least understand that in this case, the odds are in your favor since by owning stock, you are the recipient of a slice of that company's earnings.

How big a role do dividends play anymore? Isn't "income investing" a thing of the past?

Nope. Lots of nice, stable dividend stocks out there. And if you're willing to take on a little more risk there's royalty trusts and MLPs.

Splinshints: RumsfeldsReplacement: But if you're going to call it a casino, at least understand that in this case, the odds are in your favor since by owning stock, you are the recipient of a slice of that company's earnings.

My only complaint about the stock market as it is today is that people are forced into it through the 401k scam. People were convinced to give up a solid, material benefit in the form of their pension in the name of taking a second, part-time job as a stock analyst. Then, when they don't have enough to retire, people mock them for not planning ahead.

People shouldn't have to take on a second job as a stock trader to plan for retirement. If you want to, fine, but you shouldn't have to.

I have never had a 401(k) that required me to do anything other than select from a group of mutual funds. In fact, every company I've worked for hired fee-based (not commission-based) financial advisers to specifically select which mutual funds I was allowed to invest in. In every case, there were plenty of bond and money market options available other than stocks.

Also, maybe you haven't been paying close attention but many of those "solid, material benefit" pension funds turned belly up.

Ebbelwoi: Well the silver lining is that brokers like me are going bust and of course we all know by now brokers are de debil.


Not the devil. Just glorified salesmen.

stiletto_the_wise: wombatsrus: Perhaps not so much "buy and hold" but more "buy, hold, and dollar cost average". Keep investing at regular intervals into broad market indicators

You'll get killed with fees. Let's say you wanted to maintain a modest little portfolio of 5 stocks, and you had $200 a month to invest. At $5 per trade (which is pretty much the cheapest discount brokerage you'll get), you're spending $25 of those $200 every month in brokerage fees.

Your "investment" is already losing 12.5%, before the stock market even moves.

Even if you invest the entire $200 in a single mutual fund, you're still spending maybe $10 in fees, erasing any growth you might expect. On top of that, your portfolio may lose value.

Better to stick your cash in a sock. The stock market (even "discount" brokerages) is only for the rich, with a lot of money to invest all at once.

Note that I said "broad market indicators" and not stocks. Unless you (a) intimately know the company, and (b) have a 10-20 year timespam, you shouldn't be buying individual stocks.

If your mutual fund is charging you 5% (which is $10 on a $200 investment), you're in the wrong mutual fund. Places like Vanguard charge almost nothing for that transaction. Even less if it is an IRA.

Putting your money in a sock gives you zero chance against inflation, Investing your money with patience and in broad indicators does work over the years, as many have found.