Our modern stock market is a complex beast, but one thing is for sure - It now resembles a big poker game more than a system of real people investing in real work. It’s a game of bluffs, where something has value only if everyone agrees that it does. Add to the mix that computers now run the show with complex algorithms, and you have the true mess we’re now in. I mean, come on, is there any viable reason to buy a stock and sell it the same day? Only if you want to use the transaction to get rich quick. This can pay off well for individuals, but if a whole marketplace bases it’s values on leaching money out by gaming the system then it’s a marketplace that’s set up to fail. Because at the end of the day (and pardon if this seems a bit Ayn Rand-ish, but in this case she’s right) a world only moves forward when real people do real work. How well could you work if people only invested in you by the hour? (I’m sure a prostitute would have some insight on that). Imagine how people might invest their money if every investment was a minimum 6 month committment. They’d have to invest because they really believe in something, and they’d get rich (hopefully) because they’d tied their fortunes to real people who are working to do something well. That’s true investment. I’m sure that some people interact with our modern stock market this way, but it isn’t really set up to reward that kind of behavior. It’s set up to benefit those who know how to game other investors, to get wildly rich off of good speculation and creative money handling. And now that everyone wants to play that game, and their computers play it against others’ computers, it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing shudders and stalls; only a matter of time before nobody knows the true value of anything, has no concept of what an egg should really cost, or what a fair wage is, or how to do an honest day’s work.