Thursday, May 6, 2010

Things That Are Overrated: The Stock Market

So, Greece can't get their shit together and they have a financial crisis. Some other countries are trying to think of ways to help them out. All of a sudden, someone is concerned that there might not be an easy way to help them out. Therefore, the stock market in America plunges. The Dow Jones Average dipped by a billion points or something today based on the fact that there was nothing that happened in Europe.

This stock market thing is a fucking sham. Some freaking scrote didn't have anything better to do with his time when he thought up this one. We'll raise a bunch of capital by selling shares of our company to the public and then once we do that, anyone with a few bucks in their pocket can go and buy that piece from the other gie and then he owns a little piece of the company. That one little piece of the company is essentially worthless save for the fact that it's value is constantly changing and maybe this gie can unload it for more than he got it for at some point in the future.

And then all of the stock prices are interrelated in some sort of Adam Smith invisible hand wet dream for absolutely no reason whatsoever. There isn't anyone on Earth who knows how this thing actually works. The fact that Jim Cramer is considered an expert on anything other than his own masturbatory habits is just downright disconcerting, but this is the guy that people look to for advice on this sort of thing. The notion that the entire market should cycle up and down when it represents companies that do entirely different things is just dumb. The whole "times are tough" thing is just a vague notion that no one really understands.

You can step in if you like with some sort of macro argument and the entity that is known as the "national economy" or even moreso today the "global economy", but all of that just doesn't sit with me. The whole notion is nebulous, and is, by it's very nature, indecipherable by anyone. The fact that people take this shit so seriously in conjunction with the fact that people can't see shit coming with any clarity whatsoever is just proof that this is a system that somehow everyone just got suckered into.

I'm happy to accept the idea of a stock market as a single trading post to represent all of the companies that want to participate. It's essentially a farmers' market for shares of companies. I am unwilling to accept the notion that the entire market in aggregate represents the state of things in the world. The few people who are privy to a more objective view of the market don't try to improve the state of business or the world, instead they try to exploit its weak points before anyone realizes what they've done.

In my opinion the stock market is proof of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The more we observe the state of the market, the less accurate is our knowledge of the market in what would otherwise be its natural state. We are bombarding the market with metaphorical photons and not allowing it simply be the electron that it wants to be.

2 comments:

Evan said...

I wish I had a “like” button for this post.

The whole stock market thing seems like playing poker to me. Some people win with having inside knowledge (like cheating in poker). Some people win because they are good at predicting the market (like reads and tells). And a lot of people just suck and lose (no poker analogy needed).

I was thinking about buying stock in all companies I hate, like Bank of America, Citibank, etc. Not cause I know anything, just cause I’m a little bored playing poker and need a change to gamble on something else.

ChuckJerry said...

Ok, Ok, if yesterday's events didn't prove my points, then nothing will. This ten percent plunge in the market was caused by a typo. A fucking typo.

You mean to tell me that the stability of our entire economy rests in the hands of any one gie who's capable of putting in an extra zero accidentally? And is there anyone out there who wants to argue that this is a solid system?