[stouset]

> Markets that are less efficient in that task hurt long-term retirement investors and day-traders alike.

On some level this is true, but the insane quantities being siphoned out of the economy through the financial system is wildly disproportionate to the increasingly-infinitesimal gains in “price efficiency”.

As a long-term investor in the market as a whole, whether Apple’s true per-share value today is 175.01 and not 175.07 is almost completely irrelevant. Even less so the difference between 175.008913 and 175.008916.

We have long since passed a point where there is sufficient liquidity and sufficient price discovery for the purpose of buy-and-hold investment, and every extra dollar that goes to financial services in the name of more accurately determining prices is just a transfer of money from people who provide value to the economy to a class of leeches who provide nearly nothing.

[RandomLensman]

The money is not siphoned out of the economy (unless it all leaves the US/World). The money made in finance is just as any other money, i.e., it is used to consume, invest, save etc.

Btw., no-one is forced to trade incessantly, either.

[stouset]

The money technically being “in the economy” is cold comfort to the workers whose COL has steadily increased while wages have remained flat.

[twoodfin]

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N