Quote from Indrionas:
I'm completely aware that there are risk hedgers and investors besides the speculators. But before you belittle me, you could provide some facts to support your opinion. For a start, you could provide data on what percentage of total trading volume is made by risk hedgers and by speculators. The substance produced could very well be extremely marginal.
Now don't get me wrong. I am not against trading or speculating. I am not one of those Michael Moore-like protesters that have very superficial understanding of how market works. I just view the market as a competitive zero sum game and that's it. I'm done here.
you should start from here-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_stock
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market#Function_and_purpose
The stock market is one of the most important sources for companies to raise money. This allows businesses to be publicly traded, or raise additional capital for expansion by selling shares of ownership of the company in a public market. The liquidity that an exchange provides affords investors the ability to quickly and easily sell securities. This is an attractive feature of investing in stocks, compared to other less liquid investments such as real estate.
without those companies,funded by private investors via stock market-there is will no goods to buy or spend your zero sum money
even kid from kindergarten knows that.
No matter who won, the money is "earned" by the winner anyway and gets spent on pizza, toilet cleaners, software,
PZZA,DPZ,YUM,MSFT