Does anyone else think that the stock market is a scam?

[Jack]

And it is a lot like Vegas, the house always wins in the end while the players get screwed.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/09/even-little-guy-now-realizes-that-stock.html

Wall Street = Selling worthless pieces of meaningless paper

[Karl_T_]

I think you may be referring to investing for capital gains in Mutual Funds. Warren Buffet would agree with you. He has said that Wall Street is the only place where people who ride in limos go to take advice from people who took the subway. I have a negative net worth by the way. FYI.

[A_nobody]

Only those that don't understand what the market is, what it does and how it works.

I've been on Wall Street for over 45 years, neither myself nor my associates "got screwed". And to denigrate those of us that worked on the Street is wrong, especially by some one who knows not of what they speak.

There's no comparison between Vegas and Wall Street, but to those that don't understand basic finance and economics it easy to see the ignorance they show with their uneducated comments.

[cainvest1]

You either don't understand what you are talking about or have never looked at a chart of most any market index since the 1900's.

If you do your homework and buy viable companies with good products and reinvest the dividends (just as Warren Buffet did) you would be wealthy beyond any means including times when there are panics and corrections.

If you speculate in penny stocks, startups with no earnings stocks with valuations discounted to the here-after and beyond and every fad you hear about you deserve to be burned or 'screwed.'

[nathan_f]

The stock market isn't a scam, and it's not like Vegas either, but the individual investor has disadvantages. You can't possibly do the research that a hedge fund or pension fund can do and your always going to be an hour (or a day) behind the professionals.

[The_Son_of_Rage_an]

The article in the link you give is mumbo jumbo. I invest in the stock market and I make money. It is not rigged, it is not run by "the house" (although you don't say who you even think the house is) and the fact that there is high frequency trading shaves pennies off the profit margin of a typical small-time investor such as myself, so I could care less about it.

Issuing stock is the way corporations raise capital so that they can keep the US economy going. Our economic system is CAPITALISM, in other words it is based on the raising of capital. I guess that makes you a socialist or perhaps a communist.

[misty19492000]

You have to think of stocks as just another savings account. If you put your money on good predictable stocks, you'll make a little bit of money. SO is one stock that barely moves up or down, but does pay a good dividend.
I don't have any training in investing, so I know better than to try and pick a stock that would make me rich. It just doesn't work that way.

[Common_Sense]

You apparently have no clue as to what is at the heart of the stock market. No... it's not a scam. Yes... there are problems. But thinking it's like Vegas shows an incredible lack of knowledge and understanding.