Running discussion on SP, page-5676

Yep. That is undoubtedly the way the stock market will always respond to traders and dealers who are acquiring shiny new tools to steal candy and make profits without undue effort. But it is, as you say, nice to see however that there actually are "some people on WallStreet wanted to fix something, even if it meant less money for Wall Street, and for them personally."

I'll admit that that has been the nature of disallowed from the beginning, to make profit without personal effort, and I am here for exactly that reason myself.

As I gradually approached retirement age I recognised that in the years I had left I had less power than I wanted to have to acquire the level of financial wherewithal to last out my 'failing flesh' as they say. I could not use my own skills, learned over a lifetime, to make more cash without the specialised machinery of my employment at my disposal. Even when I did so as a consultant. There had to be another way that involved my leveraging my nous to recognise those people who did have access to such machinery, but needed the investment of others to turn their ideas into profits. The stock market is that tool. And I see it as a good thing, not just for the individual but for our society.

But it is one thing to try to earn a living by your wits by making good investment decisions. It is another thing again deciding to be a predator or a parasite on those others who are trying to do the same. It just wrankles with me. Sure, the world is full of predators and parasites. But human society frowns on those who rob and steal and pillage from those weaker than themselves - just because they can. And I now include those who do that from a keyboard just as much as those who do it with a knife or gun or a document. So when an entire chunk of our financial industry sets itself up to operate like that in "a free market" I choose to oppose and expose the b*******s whenever I can. A lot more of us need to look at ourselves and decide who we really are and if we want to be who we are becoming. At what cost profit?