this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Not "playing" the stock market is a loss by default. Your money WILL devalue over time, your savings account WILL NOT keep up with inflation, and if you don't invest in stocks or have some other special financial backing/windfall, you WILL retire many years later (if at all) than you would have if you invested in stocks properly.
Though, you need to be very careful with your definition of "playing". As an individual/retail investor, buying individual stocks and trying to time ups and downs is not the way to go. If you manage to not lose any money that way, you're very very likely to make less money than if you had bought a broad market ETF like the S&P 500. In general, "playing" is bad and simply buying and holding boring funds for 30+ years can 10x your money by the time you retire, if you start young. Market up? Good, buy more! Market down 50%? It's on sale, buy more! Auto-investing is your friend. This is backed by solid math and like the entire history of the stock market.
The thing is, the rich make the rules. They want you to invest in ETFs like that because they can use your money to play their little games, inflate their wealth, and stay on top. As long as you do that, they'll make sure you make solid and consistent (over the long-term) returns, because it benefits them financially and anything else would lead to a societal collapse.
Trying to beat them at their own game by buying/selling individual stocks is a losing battle. They can see your incoming trades and act on them before your order goes through. If you find a big mistake they made, like GME, they'll simply change the rules and steal your money. It doesn't matter if it's illegal, nobody can stop them. They literally make the market.
Yes, that's why as much as politicians say they hate inflation, it's necessary for capitalism.
Otherwise people just shove their money under a mattress and the "inverted funnel system" collapses.
But inflation isn't inevitable just because capitalism needs it to maintain the machine.
Quick edit:
What you're doing is like back before we had laws as a society, saying we can't outlaw crime and murder, because the people who don't agree will kill us and steal all our stuff...
We're talking about a drastic change to society, it ain't just a tweak. You can't use bits of the old system that are gonna be gone for a rationale to preserve the old system.
If we get rid of capitalism, we get rid of forced inflation that only exists to prop up capitalism....
Well, sure, if we're talking about complete overhauls, money doesn't technically need to exist at all.
I just thought it dangerous to spread the idea that you win the stock market by not playing, because that is demonstrably false and will lead to some very poor outcomes if followed in a realistic sense. I agree that an ideal society may very well not have a stock market, but for the love of god, please don't try to be the change you want to see in this instance.
Inflation is necessary for a lot more than just capitalism. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, not trading money for goods and services.
It's really important to understand that money =/= capitalism. That is a widely held misconception that is very effective at stunting societal and economic progress, at least in the US.
For example, inflation encourages people to spend money on innovation and progress rather than simply hoarding wealth, regardless of if an oligarch owns the profits or if the workers do. Yes, there can be other/better motivators for progress than just money, but you can see how it can be beneficial in economic systems other than just capitalism.
I don't think you'll find any reputable/knowledgable people that hate all inflation. It's a widely agreed fact that a little inflation is good for everyone. Politicians/economists are say they don't like high inflation. It's better to target something like 2% yoy.
There is no better way to facilitate trade than to break down 'value' into granular units that can be traded directly--that's essentially what money is, a unit of measurement for value.
Barter sucks the moment you need something from someone who has nothing you need that's of at least similar value.
It's actually because people would have to accept pay cuts from time to time, or companies would have to fire wholesale all or their people in a short time.
Also, rents would have to go down, debit could explode overnight... I'm not sure if people having a reason to invest is even an important enough reason to register.
Either way, none of that has any relation to capitalism, unless you count "any society that uses money" as "capitalism".
What about bonds or precious metals - would those represent a better return than sticks?
Idk, there are some pretty cool sticks out there
The stick of truth!
Oh yeah! Give me a wild ass staff looking stick over a bar of gold any day.
No.
Bonds are safe and good for reducing risk if your time horizon (aka the amount of time until you expect to use the money) is short. They aren't good for long-term or chasing even moderate returns. For example, if you want to retire next year and don't want to delay things if the stock market happens to crash before then, bonds are an option. That's why retirement funds tend to shift more into bonds the closer they get to the target date, but it's a tradeoff of growth for a more reliable retirement date.
Precious metals are just plain bad. https://www.macrotrends.net/2608/gold-price-vs-stock-market-100-year-chart
The stock market even outperforms real estate in the long term. Afaik, generally speaking, there isn't an option out there that beats broad market ETFs. Optimal investing, statistically, is basically as simple as regularly dumping money into the same fund every year, no matter what. The earlier you start the better, since compounding returns can mean that 5 - 10 years makes a big difference once you hit retirement age.
It's imperfect, but this helps get the point across. It's an investing game based on real market data. https://buildyourstax.com/
Thanks for the info. I suspected metals were like storing cash under your mattress but didn't know much about bonds.
Basically unless we are part of the stock market, we're fucked. And if the stock investment turns bad, we're fucked.
Makes sense why so much wealth is now in property, especially in dense urban areas.
Kinda. Though, it's more optimistic than that. The beauty of broad market funds is that the entire stock market doesn't go to zero or crash forever like an individual company/industry might. Short of the country ceasing to exist, the market is virtually guaranteed to recover eventually. That's why if you regularly invest no matter what and don't try to time the ups and downs, you always come out on top in the long run. Just look at 2008 or covid. You may be down 50% this year, but 5 or 10 years later, odds are you'll be up a good amount. Long-term investing is easy that way. Gets more difficult if the market crashes right before you were planning to retire and now you have to work 5 extra years because your portfolio wasn't hedged. Hence the bonds and other low-risk investments.
You can't put all of your money into the market, becuase if the market crashes and you lose your job (because the market crashed), the last thing you want to do is sell your stocks when they're at their lowest point. So the general rule is to keep 3 to 6 months of expenses in a savings account. Then other large purchases like a house or car can be accounted for in savings/other less risky investments too.
Real estate is generally a bad investment for your average joe. Primary residence is good tho, if your living there for about 5+ years, but that's because it's an investment AND a thing you get use out of.
No