wall street's con game, page-14

Call me just completely old-fashioned, but I believe the majority of current persons involved in stock market activity, especially those whose livelihoods depend on full-time activity in this area, neither know nor care about the underlying businesses and their dependent employees. In other words most market 'players' have no interest in 'INVESTING' in the future growth, productivity and profitability of the companies, which naive as I am, I have always thought was originally the main point of share markets.
Instead, nearly all the progressive technological developments (notably excepting the marvelous ability for ALL now to be able to trade directly from anywhere) have been aimed at enabling the manipulation of share prices to the advantage of those only interested in ripping off other shareholders, with no concern for the deleterious effects upon those who prefer to invest for a longer term share in the actual company's profitability.
Just what is the point of enabling more and more professional manipulators to trade more and more billions of shares for shorter and shorter periods - presumably to eventually just end up with machines trading with each other to the benefit of no one other than those that design and maintain them.
I think everyone, including the so-called regulators, have lost track of what the market is supposed to be about - but the depressing thought is that no one except perhaps the Sage of Omaha is really interested in or cares about the fundamental issues here.