Thank you for clarifying your point.

Here is a profound quote in your last response:

"buying and selling pieces of paper in search of profits."

It is indeed strange that we have a big industry around this activity, which really does not enhance the economy to the degree of its size.

The only economic advantage that I can see is that it allows investors to easily pull out of one investment and put those resources towards another investment. I will say that I have played this game. I don't want my money locked into one enterprise forever. If the option to sell was not there, I probably wouldn't invest in public companies or small startups. (But this is a moot point as I don't have the funds to invest these days).

But what really gets me is the derivatives of the financial market. When I first started investing, there were only shorts, puts, and calls. I still can't get my head around the first two, but the last one is comprehensible to me.

Since that time, derivatives have expanded their scope. Probably only a few people really understand them. While the apologists make all sorts of claims for such tools to keep stock prices "less wild," I see derivatives mostly as a tool for knowledgeable players to get wealthy. Sell the stocks for a small fee. Sell the derivatives for a small fee. The more sales, the more fees. We will need a bigger room or computer stack to process all those "bits of paper."

Get rid of the derivative market, I say. In the end, a stock's settlement value should be within 5% of its market value--in a financial system without derivatives.