America hits bottom?: New York Stock Exchange to be sold
67 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;38925024]lol strawman[/QUOTE]
[quote=Elecbullet]I must be a little Marxist, I find the entire system of stock and banks and money and investments to be revolting.[/quote]
[editline]21st December 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=FreakyMe;38924925]A nation's economic system should be based in reason, not the whims of the people.[/quote]
In the world of stocks and bonds, you lose if you don't use reason.
[quote]This system allows scares to sink companies and shake the economy to the core despite the perceived threat having no basis in reality.[/quote]
And how would you fix the bull and bear mentality, give people no option of liquidity in times of turmoil?
[quote]Stock values fluctuate more on rumor than substance, and [I]that's[/I] the system our entire nation's economy is based on.[/quote]
Our nation's entire economy is not based entirely on the stock market. Apparently you haven't heard of private companies.
[quote]It's a system literally designed to run on risk/benefit analysis by the investor, with no regard to the well-being of the business. People will sell-sell-sell until your company's dead and gone and they've made a pretty penny all for the fact that there was a rumor your company might go under, which in turn might make your company go under.[/quote]
You don't understand how the stock market works. Companies only receive the initial funds when they first introduce the stock. They don't receive any more money if the stock price goes up, that goes to the investor who eventually sells it to another investor.
That's not to say they don't care about their stock values, they of course need the ability to borrow in the future. But what you're implying here is wrong.
Kind of hard to argue with someone that doesn't understand Wall Street to begin with.
[quote]I could say the same about your capitalistic arrogance. [b]You're convinced America has arrived at the best economic system a mere 200 years after it's birth[/b], which is an absolutely insane claim to make. I'm not pro-communist, but I am definitely anti modern American capitalism. I believe that there is definitely a better economic system out there, and that we just haven't discovered it yet.[/quote]
I've yet to make this claim.
stopppp
this is no longer about the article at hand
Though I am done here, I feel the need to clarify - I wasn't saying that they would directly kill or save the company by buying or selling stock, but was stating the irony that a rumor of your company sinking could indirectly harm your company to the point where it can't borrow the money and ends up sinking.
My economics education is a few years out of date, though so I'll give you that.
[QUOTE=Strider*;38925089]I must be a little Marxist, I find the entire system of stock and banks and money and investments to be revolting.[/QUOTE]
Well Elecbullet said that, although I didn't.
I see stocks exchanges, banks, investments, etc as being quite successful, minus when you have "manias" where everybody invests into some brilliant new thing and then the bubble bursts (like the canals in the 1790s, railways in the 1840s, and internet in the 1990s).
[QUOTE=Kasuga Ayumu;38918246]I make a lot of money off my shares in various companies, the only reason not to love it is if you don't understand it.[/QUOTE]
True that.
You don't have to be wealthy to participate. A lot of people are just afraid to until they have enough that their risk is lowered, which is understandable.
It's just words like "stock exchange" are kind of shocking buzzwords that are automatically bad to more liberal people who don't actually understand it.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;38922246]I don't get why people say there's some difference between gambling and investment.
There's risk in both.[/QUOTE]
In gambling, the risks are artificially created on the spot. The world is doesn't gain or lose any wealth as the result of a roulette ball falling into a certain pocket or a horse winning a race. In investment, the risks are real and have to be assumed by someone.
A farmer might be afraid of the risk that flooding or droughts may destroy his crops, so he might sell a futures contract, so that he can lock in prices on the crops right now. If his crops are destroyed, he is still guaranteed an agreed-upon price and the investor is going to lose out. If the crops are fine and maybe even go up in price, the investor has made a profit.
If not for the investor, the farmer would just have to assume 100% of the risk. Investors make it possible for them to hedge that risk.
[QUOTE=Headhumpy;38922135]Perhaps I should clarify my stand: investments may or may not be gambling, depending on how you do it. If you wade into the stock market and blindly shoot, then yes, it is gambling. If you look at the charts, read the news, carefully weigh your options, THEN invest in a few companies, then it sure as hell is not gambling.[/QUOTE]
Sure it is. You're just now playing correctly.
Gambling isn't an inherently bad thing unless you're an American who got told it was evil as a kid.
[QUOTE=Headhumpy;38922135]I'm stopping this here because you are clearly too entrenched in your bias against the stock market (and apparently, investments in general) to see my point.[/QUOTE]
I invest and a lot of my money comes from investments, you're just a nimrod.
[QUOTE=scout1;38922186]Let's say the stock market was completely random.[/QUOTE]
Gambling isn't completely random. If it was, casinos wouldn't make any money.
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