Quote Originally Posted by Freightman View Post
The stock market is not that much different, though one doesn’t have that nasty little min bet to worry about, qthough I think it tends to be a zero sum game. One party must win, one party must lose, and the facilitators get paid regardless of outcome.
Freightman, that’s what you get for thinking. You’re 100% wrong. Casinos and the stock market are very different. Don’t feel bad, because many APs make this mistake. Casinos are a zero sum game. There is a winner and loser and no value is created other than entertainment. Warren Buffet (you may have heard of him) points this out and explains why casinos and stock market are very different.

The stock market is NOT a zero sum game. The stock market is a collection of companies that make our country run. It’s why we have one of the highest standard of livings in the world. Everybody can win in the stock market. The seller of the stock, the buyer of the stock, the people working for the underlying stock company, and the consumers buying the product from the stock company.

Since you have a hard time following my points, I’m going to illustrate this very simplistically for you. Take Amazon. The people who initially invested in Amazon made money selling the stock, the people who bought the stock have made money over the years, the workers of Amazon have made money and the consumers have benifited from Amazon due to lower prices. Everybody won and is winning. It’s called one of those win, win, win, win situations. There are no losers. Yes, some companies (stocks) in our country have gone bankrupt but this is what happens in a free market system when that company is not meeting the market needs for whatever reason.

The reason casinos were not legal in our country before 1931 is because they are a zero sum game. Nothing of value (other than entertainment) is created. In the past, governments didn’t legalize things that are zero sum games. They only wanted to generate revenue from things that drove our economy. This is also why chain letters and ponzie schemes are illegal. They are basically zero sum games.

Why did our government legalize casinos, gambling and lotteries? To raise revenue without being voted out of office. Casinos are really our governments voluntary tax program. So next time you win money from a casino, what you’re basically doing is taking money away from our government.

Hope this little lesson helped you understand the difference in casinos and the stock market. And guess what’s it was free. You don’t need to pay me $3K and go to some bootcamp to learn it. Lol. So next time you hear somebody say something like “the stock market is the worlds biggest casino”, you can tell that person how stupid he is.