Quote from David1:
Good thread topic and good question Stockoptionist. This question concerning the value of trading was somewhat of an issue for me when I first considered trading. But I satisfied myself about it in this way.
Basically it is that people need to compete. Competition is a part of our nature and always will be. The arena might be anything from sailing yachts, to football, to chess, or racing cars, building the fastest computer, or even being the first to reach the moon. It's a long list.
A lot of these competitions have no intrinsic value to society - as a farmer raising wheat, or someone building houses would have. Most appear even silly. Consider the amount of time and energy grown men and women put into moving a ball up and down a field, or skating around and around on the ice at the Olympics, or seeing who can run 27 miles the fastest. One could name a hundred examples. And at the end of it all, only a few win and the rest are losers and what is accomplished?
It is very much like trading when you think about it. Traders push price, quarterbacks push a football, bicyclists push bicycles, horse racers push their horses. What intrinsic value does any of it have?
Very little, unless you realize that this is what people do. People like and need to compete with one another.
So every fair competition has value in that people have value and their interests have value.
As to casino gambling, slot machines, blackjack, lotteries etc., those things are not fair competion of course, but are in reality legalized thievery of naive or addicted people.
Trading is not like that, and it is not accurate to compare it to those things. People lose at trading not because of others' unfair advantage, but because their own skill level is not high enough.
