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Trading, as in "people crazily trying to profit from a dumber / slower counterpart" is zero sum. But trading, as in, go to market and exchange money for another thing, can be a positive-sum game. If both participants in the exchange have different risk profiles, the exchange might make both of them happy - that's why they go to market, and expect not to be ripped off. An easy example are future markets (the risk of high prices is good for the guy that has oranges, bad for the guy that makes juice). Another example, with stocks, is putting your money in diversified assets. If all I have is stocks from company A, and you have only company B shares, and even if both companies are exposed to the same risks, it's good for both of us to interchange stock. If the CEO gets a heart attack, neither of us gets impacted wholly. The point being: as you can't predict the future, the fact that one party ended up winning is not sufficient condition for the whole thing being a zero-sum game, unless you restrict "the game" to be something smaller than the intentions of the agent, which is dumb. |