Is the stock market just a glorified Casino?

>>1826371
In my opinion it is. It's more like sports betting. You can make a profit if you have enough valuable knowledge

>>1826371
Been wondering the same myself OP

>>1826371

It's not. It's no coincidende that some investors make returns there and some not. Of course, this can be at times attributed to a discrepancy in information availability.

Also, through stocks, companies gain capital, and this can lead to more people having jobs, getting paid better, etc. There are cases in which the companies just milk the stock market for their own profit (like a casino), though.

>>1826371
It varies based on your time frame.
The stock market grows over time as the economy grows, by harvesting resources, developing knowledge, and the like. It's not a zero sum game, and it's ultimately the same reason banks can afford to make loans and pay interest on deposits.

If you make 7% a year by buying a mutual fund, that's not really gambling. The odds of a diversified index fund losing everything are about as low as those of the FDIC going bankrupt.
If you make 7% a day trading options with no knowledge of the underlying asset, of course that's gambling.

>>1826371
It's kind of like a casino except this time you're playing with house edge.

If you make reasonable decisions and give yourself enough time for variations to smooth out, you will win.
If you make bad decisions there's a small chance of winning big and a big chance of losing.
No matter what you do there's a possibility that you will lose in the short term.

>>1826371
All electronic markets today are traded in the fractional reserve system. So for every share of stock or bond thats out there are 50 ~100 times that amount trades everyday on the exchanges. This started back in the 70's.
In reality there are over 100,000,000 failure-to-delivers everyday on the stockmarket. That means there is no certificates, no exchange of title, there is no exchange of money.
Also look at the stock market today. Dow is at 20,000. Why is this? And you'll see the same pattern in any other index for the matter. Are all of these stock values based on actual earnings? S&P 500 is trading at 26x earnings and earnings have been going down for the last 7 quarters. This is a result of the Fed's QE propping up a zombie economy and absolutely no practicing rationality of the financial markets. They don't teach you this shit in school unfortunately b/c they need participants within the system - because US economy currently works on a debt-issuing structure.
So the simple answer is yes, its a casino. And they are betting on the fact that the too big to fail banks will be bailed out by the tax payers.

>>1826381
It is worse than sports betting.
Sports betting follows simple rules. You bet on outcomes, and if those outcomes happen you get your money.

The stock market does not follow simple rules. No matter what the outcome is, you can't predict the reaction of the market. Bad earnings could still trigger an increase in price. Good earnings could trigger a loss in price. People rationalize their predictions, against hard facts. There is no reasonable explenation for Teslas value, no matter how optimistic your forecasts and DCFs are.

>>1826371
Investing in big companies is pretty low risk.