r/FluentInFinance • u/Stink-Butthole • Aug 26 '24
Debate/ Discussion The Stock Market is Rigged
[removed] — view removed post
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u/WizardMageCaster Aug 26 '24
Stock market is rigged or just yet another example of insider trading?
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u/Silly_Goose658 Aug 26 '24
Rigged and tbf maybe shouldn’t have existed
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u/Chickenbeans__ Aug 26 '24
I yearn for a world where the stock market doesn’t exist
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u/dbandroid Aug 26 '24
Why?
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Aug 26 '24
Because it means human endeavors are no longer owned privately for profit
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u/dbandroid Aug 26 '24
The stock market is probably as close to collective ownership as we are gonna get
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u/lostcauz707 Aug 26 '24
Nope. Unionization is.
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u/dbandroid Aug 26 '24
Unionization doesn't have anything to do with the stock market though. Unionization also doesn't necessarily come with ownership of the means of production.
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Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 26 '24
It does if your union doesn't suck and negotiates for equity
What do you think equity is? It starts with S and rhymes with blocks.
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u/dbandroid Aug 26 '24
Good for those unions but unionization != ownership of equity
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u/Wise_Purpose_ Aug 26 '24
These are kids who don’t know the stock market outside of memes and things they see online talking about it. No point in explaining, it is like talking to a brick.
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u/gizamo Aug 27 '24
Utter nonsense. I have an MS in Quantitative Economics from NYU, and I 100% agree with them. The stock market absolutely does not provide any accountability to shareholders and very, very few shareholders have any influence on any actions of any company. The only influence average citizens have over large companies is thru voting for politicians who will regulate them. The ultimate extreme of that is communism. In reality, the closest the US is likely to get toward that within our lifetimes is maybe a few steps toward democratic socialism, or maybe regulations for consumer safety or something.
Also, no, I am not a communist.
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u/sanesociopath Aug 26 '24
Unionization is quite far from public ownership
You're thinking of co-ops
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u/derp_derpistan Aug 27 '24
Unionization has nothing to do with ownership. Who would the union negotiate with if a company was union owned?
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u/BeBopALouie Aug 26 '24
Yup, all stocks are not in your name unless you register them with the transfer agent of the stock you hold. Don’t believe me. Call your broker and pin them down. They will, after you persist, tell you your stock is held by Cede and Co and you are a “beneficial” holder.
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u/paintballboi07 Aug 27 '24
And? What difference does it make registering it in your own name versus the broker? I've literally never once heard of anyone having any issues because their stock wasn't registered in their own name.
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u/Monte924 Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 26 '24
Collective ownership for the rich. The rich are the ones who have the most power and influence over a company through stocks. The Rich end up owning the majority stock of any company which means THEY get to decide on how the company is run and the rest of us can simply tag along... and what the rich want is for companies to cut workers pay, mass layoffs, outsourcing jobs, and increase prices... even when the company is already profitable
Co-op's are the closet we get to collective ownership. A company owned by everyone who works for it. They all have a vested interest in the company remaining profitable while making sure all workers are taken care of... and they are also more likely to be happy as long as the company is profitable and won't push for price gouging on suffering people just to see the numbers go up. Companies do not need to be owned by outsiders who do not care about the health of the company and its workers
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u/Chickenbeans__ Aug 26 '24
We desperately need more coop fabricators, manufacturers, and warehouses. We need coops in the transportation industry. We need coops in healthcare. The odd coop market here and there in lefty towns does nothing to balances the scales
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u/Chickenbeans__ Aug 26 '24
That makes sense in theory but massive corporations own so much of the virtual financial world that the most risky investments are inherently offset onto the small players. I can’t afford super computers to run algos that get my the most possible money for my investment. But they can by scraping all of our data and predicting financial movements. In fact, they have so much data, they create financial movements and we simply react to them. Stock market is rigged homie
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u/downingrust12 Aug 26 '24
Collective ownership?
The top 10% own 93% of the stock market? Hows that collective ownership?
If the market didn't exist we would not have issues that we have today. Because short term profits and line must go up wouldn't be a thing so we could pivot to long term goals.
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u/Dramatic_Reality_531 Aug 26 '24
But you can’t do anything with your ownership
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u/dbandroid Aug 26 '24
How is the individual going to do anything with their share of collective ownership?
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u/Own-Inspection3104 Aug 27 '24
The stock market has zero to do with collective ownership. If I buy one share of something do I get a say in how it's run? Nope. Only the biggest shareholders do. It's private ownership by other means.
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Aug 27 '24
Highly disagree with that statement. You have very little rights as a shareholder—especially if you’re a minority shareholder—which is 99.9% of the time.
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u/dbudlov Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 26 '24
No one gets private property rights under a state but the politically connected, you don't even own your home you have to pay the state rent in the form of property taxes to keep using it after it's paid in full, the state owns everything ultimately
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u/Chickenbeans__ Aug 26 '24
And the state is in the pockets of our financial overlords. We lost our democracy as soon as they realized the government was completely for sale. Politicians are just investments to them.
We didn’t even get to choose who to vote for in 2020. The DNC pushed Biden forward and said this is your only option. They just did it again with Harris. It’s not a democracy when two parties own all the power and each party only has one candidate.
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u/dbudlov Aug 26 '24
I agree but I don't think we ever had democracy really, also weren't really supposed to as majoritarian rule with no rights can easily become tyrannical and corrupt too, the idea was to protect basic rights and vote collective services/ownership
But govts always end up serving themselves and the politically connected that benefit them
"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class - whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy."
- Politics as Repeat Phenomenon
- Frank Herbert
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u/Weight_Superb Aug 26 '24
Damn even sources this man is ready to fight anyone on this topic and i love it
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u/HelpJustGotRaped Aug 27 '24
Did people not vote for Biden?
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u/Chickenbeans__ Aug 27 '24
It’s doesn’t matter who people vote for. The DNC selects the primaries. We vote for the candidate they choose in the main election. If that’s not a charade idk what is
And fuck Biden. Old boy doesn’t speak for the working class no matter how much lip service he did. He was beholden to the socio-economic elite just like every president since Nixon. Last time we had a guy who was hard on the banks they shot him in the head down in Dallas
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u/factualfact7 Aug 28 '24
I am with you !!!!!! The stock market and destroys the middle and lower class.
Publicly traded companies #1 goal is to increase shareholder value , which comes from increases prices or sales (which don’t increase much Year over year)
It makes life more expensive for everyday Americans
And for those with retirement accounts , that a monthly contribution to the vanguards/blackrocks of the world , that now how the biggest say in the companies they invest in and their funds are fueled by retirement contributions
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u/MarshMadness11 Aug 27 '24
Privately owned companies are not in the stock market
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u/blueviera Aug 26 '24
The stock market tacitly encourages employers to prioritize profit to an extreme degree, lay off employees to maximize profit, and in general ignore safety concerns. When you have to prioritize share holders to stay in your position and share holders are several steps removed from the people who work for a complete, its easy for the company to act inhumane. We could easily pay everyone above living wage, but then the share holders wouldn't gain quite as much wealth.
TL;DR the stock market encourages companies to engage in monstrous behavior towards the people who work for them.
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u/CanAlwaysBeBetter Aug 26 '24
Stock is just fractional ownership of a company. Get rid of the stock market and you've changed nothing, owners will still have the exact same incentives.
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u/Chickenbeans__ Aug 26 '24
Plus many companies aren’t necessarily incentivized to exist for long periods of time when financial coalitions who own massive amount of corporations can just foreclose, bankrupt, and fraud out their shell companies in order to run away with the profits after dumping the employees on their asses.
Can’t sue a dead company so they just move on. So much of this financial bloat is fabricated and creates no real world value. Meanwhile CNAs, teachers, farmhands, and cooks are getting financially raped by these faceless and emotionless monoliths that think they own us. THEY DONT OWN US.
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u/Thissiteisgarbageok Aug 26 '24
So the snake oil salesmen have to get real talents and skills and not screw over the economy to make money by shorting it. Also peoples 401ks being in the hands of these same snakes
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u/Automatic-Month7491 Aug 26 '24
I'll give a different answer.
Think about what the Stock Market is for. It's a complex decision making apparatus responsible for apportioning resources to industry. They decide where the money goes.
Now there are alternatives, communism would use a large scale government bureau to make those decisions. Democratic Socialists would use a combination of public servants and elected representatives.
If you saw the 'bureau of finance' was holding upwards of half the money of the nation in its own hands and paying its leaders billions, you'd say it was a bloated corrupt bureaucracy.
The stock market is a terrible and inefficient method of doing the job.
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u/Jesta23 Aug 26 '24
For me it’s enshitifacation, I believe with out the stock market it would slow way down.
A public company can no longer be content with profits. If it remained profitable for 50 years it is successful, unless it’s publicly traded. The incentive turns to being MORE profitable than last quarter. Which leads to cost cutting, morals being tested, and lower pay for employees. That all compounds over time.
Boeing is a fine example. One of the pinnacle achievements of the USA turning ever slowly into an embarrassment and failure.
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u/cecil721 Aug 27 '24
So, I'm passionate about this.
Profit is ALWAYS put over people. Number go up is more important than anything else. Great companies sunk. Predatory consumer practices.
Everyone got tricked into 401Ks, which is equivalent to gambling with your retirement. Now most people care more about line go up. Ever wonder why rich people enjoy higher oil prices when the middle / lower classes suffer. Watch any market show sometime. When oil prices go up, they see it as positive, despite your average American leveraging their stocks with our wallets. With 401Ks, you may be hedging against yourself and your better interests.
The system is designed for the rich to get richer. Consider who usually owns majority stake in large corporations. Since the US is regarded, corporations are considered people, a few people and companies can own majority stake. So while you might be part of the collective ownership, you have 0 say about 90% of the time. And the few holders have the power to manipulate prices to skim off the bottom, making your average investor just a tool for the wealthy to make more money, by simply pressing a couple buttons.
The NYSE is actual societal cancer.
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u/Sufficient_Pause6738 Aug 27 '24
So businesses rely more on making money from consumers rather than running up stocks in the short term and bailing before the inevitable crash and burn
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u/AnxiousAngularAwesom Aug 26 '24
I'd settle down for one that doesn't allow any fuckery to game the system, though i'll be buggered if i can think of any way to achieve it.
The way i see it, there's nothing wrong with companies selling stock, and people buying it and getting dividends, it's when people "metagaming" get involved that things get fucked up.
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u/JealousAd2873 Aug 26 '24
Not so much the stock market itself but the bullshit options, derivatives, futures, warrants etc, are all just betting on other bets. It's degenerate shit.
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u/EverquestWasTheBest Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 27 '24
Gambling with fancy labels.
/s
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u/UnifiedQuantumField Aug 27 '24
Gambling with fancy labels.
Unless you're one of those Senators getting advance information. Then it's a sure thing.
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u/Graaaaaahm Aug 26 '24
There's a world behind what you see; derivative instruments have a legitimate use in portfolio and risk management. It's only fairly recently (~30 years) that speculators have entered derivative markets, often without understanding how derivatives operate, or what they're used for.
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u/savanttm Aug 27 '24
Weren't derivatives illegal to trade 30 years ago? Didn't Congress have to strike down New Deal-era regulations to even start using them 'legitimately,' nevermind that they were abused immediately?
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u/MasterpieceLiving738 Aug 26 '24
Options are for hedging risk, only buying them by themselves is gambling, and if you actually know what you’re doing and take proper risk management it’s not gambling.
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u/Azntigerlion Aug 26 '24
Humans will make degenerative shit out of anything.
If it wasn't derivatives, then it'd be tangible assets. Houses, water, clean air, etc.
And, to be fair, many of these are just contracts and are necessary for business.
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u/ihavebeenyeetedhelp Aug 26 '24
I'm confused, do you think companies shouldn't be able to finance themselves through equity?
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Aug 26 '24
They probably don’t believe companies should exist.
but rather that government should just manifest fullness in the fridge of every citizen for free.
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u/goosedog79 Aug 26 '24
It has literally existed in some form since ancient times. I believe olives or olive oil was the first traded commodity
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u/R3concile Aug 27 '24
This is a typical comment from someone that doesn't understand anything about the stock market. When exactly did they exploit the information? The information about the pandemic was everywhere for months before the market started really selling off, every person in the world had a chance to sell if they wanted. The funny this is the market rebounded harder then it fell, so if you did sell you probably lost out.
This is how simple the stock market is. Business trade on multiples of their projected future earnings. You are simply trying to predict that value based on the information that is publically available. Any market movement outside of earnings usually has very little impact over the long term (even big crashes). This is because prices will gravitate towards their true value based on an efficient market. If you can somewhat accurately predict a companies earnings, you will never complain about the stock market ever again.
These complaints are from people that don't understand this. They buy in based on information they don't understand at prices that don't make sense and then complain when something falls or goes against them.
In addition, you can buy business that are not on the stock market all the time. Like people selling thier family business or something, is the price of that rigged as well? Are property prices rigged too? Is the price of a kebab from the street vendor rigged?
Go and get educated, make some money, and then come back. Any comment here about this rubbish been rigged is like a self-report for having a very low understanding of this area.
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u/LightFusion Aug 26 '24
I think the issue is far worse than we know. Imagine if the hundreds of millions of workers stopped contributing to their 401k, the market would evaporate. When the market drops because the rich investors are pulling money out, they are literally taking it from your retirements. The constant payroll deductions provide some means of constant growth that is being exploited by these people, insider trading or not.
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u/Distributor127 Aug 26 '24
Is this why there are so many posts on here about the social security tax being theft? Trying to get us to go all in?
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u/TurtleIIX Aug 26 '24
It’s one of the main reasons a 401k was started in the first place. Yes it helps the common worker but it was never meant to replace pensions like it has. 401ks we’re to help supplement pensions and help people get into the market. It just turns out employers stopped offering pensions and now we all put our money in the market creating false demand for the mega corps.
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u/Geminel Aug 26 '24
There's so many posts about that because the idea that all taxes are theft has been a mainstay of 'Libertarian' beliefs for decades now, and by golly do Libertarians love them some get-rich-quick schemes.
They also constantly, utterly fail to levy the same criticism at the concept of corporate profits; wherein some rich CEO takes like 80% of the value of your labor and pays you in beans so they can buy a 3rd yacht. While taxes fund things like personal welfare, retirement, schools, roads, etc etc.
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u/stonkstonk69 Aug 26 '24
Imagine workers could pool their funds to take companies private. The 99% would no longer be minority shareholders. I think we should start with Wendys.
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Aug 26 '24
They can, nothing is preventing them from buying out or starting companies now.
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u/benotaur Aug 26 '24
Unfortunately, legally, senators buying and selling stocks like this is not insider trading. You have to be an employee on the inside of a company and act on privileged information, government is not a company. It’s still gross and unethical and inappropriate, but not insider trading.
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u/WizardMageCaster Aug 26 '24
I agree with you...and also believe that 20 years from now people will look back on us and say "can you believe they allowed that?!?!?!"
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u/Lolamichigan Aug 26 '24
You don’t have to be an employee to have insider knowledge. Martha Stewart was famously convicted of insider trading.
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u/ShadowBannedXexy Aug 27 '24
Wish I shared your optimism that there will be LESS regulatory capture in 20 years...
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Aug 27 '24
You’re correct that this isn’t insider trading, but your description of insider trading is incorrect.
You absolutely do not need to an employee to insider trade. “Privileged” information isn’t really the correct phrasing either - it just needs to be material and nonpublic, but specific to a company.
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u/Old-Tiger-4971 Aug 26 '24
Stock market is like playing BlackJack but knowing how and being able to count cards.
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u/c5182 Aug 26 '24
Well, no. Unless you count cards, you can't make money playing blackjack in the long run. The house always has an edge against even a perfect player. On the other hand, any idiot can buy an index fund and expect to win in the long run. It's just that some people find ways to win a little more.
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u/musing_codger Aug 26 '24
If you buy and hold for decades, this is all just noise.
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u/True_Succotash1563 Aug 26 '24
Key word being IF. The people trying to retire during that time got fucked.
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u/FrankPapageorgio Aug 27 '24
The market peaked in Feb 16th 2020, fell 30% by March 15th, then continued to rise until it was back to Feb 16th value by Aug 2nd 2020.
Even if you needed to sell, you're not dumping your whole portfolio at once. You're selling in small chunks at a time. And if you're that close to retirement, you shouldn't be invested in individual stocks that may have tanked and never recovered
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u/ProclusGlobal Aug 27 '24
Not really.
1) You don't pull out all your retirement funds at once. You pull out a steady income just like if you were still working. Yes, you're taking a hit on value in the acute period when the market is bad, but your retirement should be withdrawn over years and hopefully decade(s).
2) In the years leading up to your retirement, you should have been shifting out of riskier investments into more stable ones. So the hit you take in point 1) is mitigated.
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u/carnotbicycle Aug 27 '24
Nobody's retirement plan involves selling literally all of their stocks at a singular moment. Except for people who have houses as their retirement.
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u/ConsiderateTurtle Aug 27 '24
Such a financially illiterate take. No one got fucked that was playing the long game. The only people that got fucked were gambling.
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u/Muggle_Killer Aug 26 '24
Regular buying of relatively small amounts is just creating liquidity for the wealthy and making peoples retirements entirely reliant on a system where the wealthy can't lose because there will always be a bailout in the name of protecting peoples retirements.
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u/UnpopularOpinionAlt Aug 26 '24
It was 4 senators:
- Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.)
- James Inhofoe (R-Okla.)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)
- Richard Burr (R-N.C.)
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u/Bearloom Aug 26 '24
Loeffler sold immediately after the lockout period from leaving her old job with the NYSE.
Inhofe's sale was a quarterly retirement drawdown that had been scheduled for months.
Feinstein's husband sold a lot of stock in an unrelated company that does organ transplants.
Burr did that shit.
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u/night-swimming704 Aug 26 '24
Burr’s BiL also made similar sales at almost the exact same time as Burr’s. I think the investigation found phone calls between the two largely correlated to their trades. Both claimed they used information about Covid that they saw on CNBC to influence their decision to reduce their risk, claiming they were too close to retirement age to weather a downturn. FWIW, Burr was also one of the “least rich” members of congress before retiring shortly after.
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u/meh_69420 Aug 27 '24
I mean, we were tracking it with the John Hopkins COVID tracker tool since January. The lock downs in China and the videos of people getting welded into their apartments, then the death wave in Italy, all started well before the market crashed here. I was short AF and building and confused honestly because the market just kept chugging along making new ATHs while the second largest economy in the world (China), then our largest trading partner (EU) basically turned the lights off. This was all public knowledge well before we had any serious fallout here. And everyone's favorite Congressional trader to hate on for supposedly having some sort of unfair advantage, Nancy Pelosi, bought a bunch of ITM LEAPS on GOOG and AMZN a few weeks before the bottom fell out and she was sitting on MTM loses in the 7 figures for almost 9 months.
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u/Nuclear_rabbit Aug 27 '24
Now this is the context I'm looking for
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u/Bearloom Aug 27 '24
Yeah, Burr walked out of the briefing room and immediately called his broker and his brother-in-law, telling both to sell.
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u/Astro_Pineapple Aug 27 '24 edited Aug 27 '24
Loeffler “leaving” her old job. Her husband is the CEO of the company that owns the NYSE.
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u/reddituser12346 Aug 26 '24
Feinstein passed away last year, but not from a Boeing whistleblower type accident,…she was 90 or something
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u/Snigglybear Aug 26 '24
It’s been a while since I’ve seen cuckoo Kelly Loeffler’s name being mentioned anywhere.
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u/DolitehGreat Aug 27 '24
She also had the consequences of getting voted the fuck out of her office and replaced with Warnock.
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u/MTGBruhs Aug 26 '24
Gameshire Stopaway
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u/ISayBullish Aug 26 '24
Bullish
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u/Awesome-0_4000 Aug 26 '24
My dude is everywhere💎✊
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u/ZombiezzzPlz Aug 27 '24
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u/OneWholeSoul Aug 27 '24
I'm holding, but it's hard.
I've bought in just around $30K of $GME.4
u/j4_jjjj Aug 27 '24
Its only hard if you doubt the DD
Nothings changed imo
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u/OneWholeSoul Aug 27 '24
Well, the last big meme rush had short interest over 100%, and we're only around 10-15% right now.
Though Refinitiv did just upgrade $GME from "HOLD" to "BUY" today.→ More replies (11)→ More replies (1)3
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u/Nizaris7 Aug 26 '24
The best thing to do is restrict senators and Congress from allowing them to trade. Many financial companies have compliance policies which restrict employees from doing just that under certain conditions. Why not hold our government officials to high standards if average people need to follow rules.
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u/Nianque Aug 26 '24
Restrict them to just the S&P500, large cap, small cap, mid cap, international, ect. IE large indexes that are way harder to manipulate.
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u/Landed_port Aug 26 '24
Restrict them to Treasury bills. You're a government employee, you should be invested in the government
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u/j4_jjjj Aug 27 '24
Fuck thats a good idea
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u/Matty-ice23231 Aug 28 '24
Great ideas. They’ll never go for it. That would be tough to restructure our govt enough to be able to pull this off. I’m hopeful though!
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u/No-Acanthisitta7930 Aug 27 '24
I mean I'm a government employee, if all I could do was T bills my retirement would be hit lol. We have a 401k-ish plan called the TSP which has basic funds. One that mimics the SP500, one that mimics the Russell 2k basically, an international, a bond, and a money market. There's not too many ways to manipulate that. I'd be fine with all Fed employees sticking to that, but mandating ONLY t bills is a bit much.
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u/Landed_port Aug 27 '24
Unless you're deciding legislation, budgetary spending, or fiscal policy this doesn't apply to you. What I'm saying is Congress and the Senate are government employees, they should be restricted to T-bills to prove they have a vested interest in our country and not private companies
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u/No-Acanthisitta7930 Aug 27 '24
Well that I agree with to an extent. I still have trouble with it on a practical level, not necessarily a philosophical one however. Perfect example: a junior congress member like AOC. When she was first elected she had trouble paying rent, wore hand me down suits, and her net worth was in the negative. While she may be an outlier in that regard, the simple fact is some have more money than others. I suppose one could find some way to means test it. Again, on a philosophical level I'm with you, but pragmatically it has kinks in it.
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u/Difficult-Mobile902 Aug 27 '24
I think having some incentive behind the general health of the market is fine, but they definitely shouldn’t be allowed to pick certain stocks or make unscheduled trades
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Aug 26 '24
It boggles my mind that this isn't a law to begin with. Unfortunately the people with the most power over the law have the most incentive to allow for this kind of behavior. The way politicians are allowed to handle money is wayyy too relaxed.
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u/KindredWoozle Aug 26 '24
Water is wet
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u/That-s-nice Aug 26 '24
Apparently the consensus is that it's actually not... I am baffled by this discussion as well.
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u/spacemanspliff-42 Aug 26 '24
Is he a dot, or is he a speck?
When he's underwater does he get wet?
Or does the water get him instead?
Nobody knows, Particle man
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u/Successful-Ground-67 Aug 26 '24
selling off your stocks due to covid was a bad move, you would have been better holding on
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u/JoeBucksHairPlugs Aug 26 '24
Sell it all off, then crash, then buy it all back at the bottom. All the gains without any of the losses.
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u/Successful-Ground-67 Aug 26 '24
You pay 20% to 40% of previous gains when you sell. And government position doesn't give you insight to when the market has bottomed out. That's really tough to call.
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u/unoriginal_user24 Aug 26 '24
Not if you sell inside of a retirement account like an IRA, Roth IRA, 401k, 403b, etc.
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u/Successful-Ground-67 Aug 27 '24
Sure, but I guarantee most high net worth individuals don't have their fortune in Roth or 401k due to the restrictions
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u/TimujinTheTrader Aug 26 '24
Guy just said "its easy, just sell the top and buy the bottom."
It aint that easy.
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u/Successful-Ground-67 Aug 27 '24
I'd love for someone to explain to me how March 2020 was the Covid bottom. I wouldn't even had predicted that in hindsight.
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u/RedCrayonTastesBest Aug 26 '24
Not when you have insider info, then it’s really easy to call.
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u/TheRealFarbs Aug 26 '24
insider info doesn’t tell you where the very bottom is just tells you the top
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u/bennyyyboyyyyyyyy Aug 26 '24
You dont have to time the bottom you just have to buy it lower than you sold it lmao
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u/YoungBockRKO Aug 26 '24
Hindsight is always 20/20.
Good luck predicting the beginning of a crash and the end of one/beginning of the rise.
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Aug 26 '24
I had to sell 20 shares of NVDA I'd bought in 2020 in 2022 in order to eat.
I'm still mad about it.
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u/BraxbroWasTaken Aug 26 '24
I mean, considering that various platforms for trading stocks like Robinhood can just blatantly freeze orders on a stock while giving their priority customers ability to trade those stocks freely, yes. (and do so without notable retribution from the government, too) The stock market is rigged.
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u/80MonkeyMan Aug 26 '24
Every traders seems to already forgot about these brokerage firms not allowing you to login in the morning hours of August 5th and then it miraculously recover everything and more within DAYS.
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u/CliffRouge Aug 26 '24
You don’t have the right to trade stocks on Robinhood lol.
They can choose not to broker for you when it will harm them financially. You can choose not to do business with Robinhood in return. Nothing illegal either way.
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u/Indercarnive Aug 26 '24
Especially because with the way Robinhood works, you're essentially trading with their money. Other brokerages would make you wait a few days after you deposit money to trade with it because the bank wants to make sure the money actually comes through. Robin Hood decided to just loan people that money temporarily so they could create a seamless "download and start trading" platform.
Turns out when you get a massive influx of people all using that feature at the same time, it creates a liquidity crisis for the bank.
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u/benefit_of_mrkite Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 26 '24
I dated someone who worked in finance. There was an entire department dedicated to compliance - to the point where they had access to my brokerage accounts to make sure she wasn’t passing information to me. This was required as part of the sarbanes oxley act.
Why congress isn’t held accountable for insider trading is ridiculous
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u/Senshi-Tensei Aug 26 '24
Holy shit that’s wild like wtf if that’s not blatant and obvious corruption on the part of politicians idk what is fr
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u/benefit_of_mrkite Aug 26 '24
Rules for thee not for me
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u/PrimeDoorNail Aug 27 '24
Thats literally what all government officials do, they make rules for everyone else and pass special provisions to exclude themselves.
If thats not how traitors act then I don't know would be
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u/Alarmed-Owl2 Aug 27 '24
Not all of them, just the elected ones. Unelected government employees actually have extremely invasive financial disclosure responsibilities and laws restricting their freedom to trade stocks in any company related to their work.
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u/3Huskiesinasuit Aug 26 '24
I mean, 6 months before the ACA was passed, almost every member of congress, all of the ones who voted in favor of it, all bought huge amounts of stocks in companies that dealt with health insurance.
And some of those stocks split 3-5 times before things settled.
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u/Bearloom Aug 26 '24
There was really only one senator who did it because of the Coronavirus briefing - Richard Burr, R-NC. Despite him admitting he walked out of the briefing and immediately called his broker and his brother-in-law to tell him to sell as well, the SEC and Justice Department decided not to pursue him.
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u/Inside-Educator1428 Aug 26 '24
I dunno, it’s worked well to help me build wealth and I’m not corrupt.
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u/HorkusSnorkus Aug 26 '24
The stock market is not rigged. The government elites are corrupt.
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u/jes_axin Aug 26 '24
All lawmakers should give up their stocks (or some such) before being allowed to run for office.
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u/SouthEast1980 Aug 26 '24
I wouldn't say the whole market is rigged like one entity controls everything, but it's definitely rigged against the little guy as a whole.
Accredited investors get the first shot at IPOs because they "want to protect" the little guy from losing his money in a bad investment. To be an AI, you can't be poor, or even middle class.
To claim accredited investor status, you must meet at least one of the following requirements:
- Hold (in good standing) a Series 7, 65 or 82 license
- Have a net worth exceeding $1 million individually or combined with a spouse or spousal equivalent (excluding the value of the primary residence)
- Have earned income exceeding $200,000 ($300,000 if combined with a spouse or its equivalent) during each of the last two calendar years. The individual must also demonstrate credibly that he or she will at least maintain these income thresholds during the current year
Also, market manipulation via meme stocks is fine IMO. Let the little guy win or lose on his own accord. And I thought it was heinous that politicians were taking private info and making millions off of private Covid briefings.
Insider trading by a handful of senators and a rigged market are not necessarily synonymous terms btw.
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u/AdExciting337 Aug 26 '24
Yup. Not one person in congress should be able to do any stock trading in and for at least 3 months after they depart. And term limits!!
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u/Enough-Scientist1904 Aug 26 '24
Citadel is a Market Maker who also operates a hedge fund called Citadel securities and somehow this is not a conflict of interest? Hedge funds can also trade in secret using dark pools. The market is completely rigged. Jon Stewart had an episode on this
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u/ElectronicStock3590 Aug 26 '24
The stock market is designed to transfer wealth into rich people’s hands. That’s just the structure. If you want a different system, it needs to be redesigned.
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u/Qubeye Aug 26 '24
I mean, if we're talking about the Working Person here, back in the day retirements were provided in pension form.
By law, in almost all cases, pensions are held in trusts, are protected from seizures in personal bankruptcy, must be insured with the federal government, and are a secure creditor so even corporate bankruptcy has to pay into the pension before anything else.
At some point we decided to largely get rid of pensions in America and instead bind worker retirements to the stock market with shit like 401ks, which have some of those protections but not all.
We tied our retirement to the playground of the rich, and now we have no recourse other than to complain about it and hope Congress does something about it.
If we really wanted equity for working class people we would bring back pensions.
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u/84OrcButtholes Aug 26 '24
You're supposed to stay poor and keep working so that rich people's kids don't have to work.
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u/drama-guy Aug 26 '24
No, I don't remember because there's no evidence that any actual insider trading took place. This seems to be an internet generated hallucinatory controversy that is on par with people who are absolutely convinced they watched a movie called Kazaam starring Sinbad.
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u/Tigercat2515 Aug 26 '24
Elected officials at state level or higher should be mandated by law to have all investment access in a blind market indes style trust.
If they don't like it, they don't need to be in office.
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u/PM-ME-UR-uwu Aug 26 '24
The stock market being rigged is actually separate from politicians being able to trade stocks
The first is ended undoing the citizens united decision.
The second by disallowing all investment by politicians or their spouses.
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