I just hate it when people talk about their investments in the stock market, and believe they are somehow entitled to a return on that investment. As if the money they've used to purchase shares of a company is the same as giving a company money for them to use to get started, expand an ongoing business, or develop new and/or improved products or services that benefit society.
Well let me set the record straight here.
Transferring [exchanging] shares of a stock, between individuals thousands of times removed from the original investor in a business, is not an investment. That money doesn't go to help the business, and it definitely doesn't help the economy. The only ones who do benefit are the brokerage houses that enable the exchanges. It's not an investment in anything, and no one is entitled to a return on that money.
Warren Buffet invests. Venture Capitalists invest. They put money at risk giving it directly to businesses, new and ongoing, to get started, to prop them up, expand, or improve on the products and services produced by those companies that benefit society. Those are the ones who deserve a return on their investments.
Buying shares on the NYSE, NASDAQ, or the myriad of other exchanges around the world, is no more an investment then trading baseball cards and other collectibles, or plunking down $20 on the passline in Craps. It's just another legalized form of gambling. The only difference between going to Vegas, and buying shares of stock on the various stock exchanges is, Vegas makes no illusions of its true intent.
In could also be said that putting money in the stock market may even hurt the economy. By shifting money to the stock market, there's less money available for lending by banks to businesses. Fewer jobs are created to produce the products and services that benefit society, and there's less money available to individuals for the purchase of homes, cars etc.
There once was a time when the only thing banks did was lend money to businesses and individuals. Now banks would rather trade shares of stocks, their only concern being profits and with little regard for what's best for society.
The stock market is nothing more than a scam designed buy a few schemers [grifters] to siphon money from the economy and the working [producing] classes and transfer it to them, and until the US and the rest of the world wake up to that reality, the middle class is destined for extinction, and what countless thousands of people have fought and died for, over the past 200+ years, will have been for naught.