Is stock and futures market a Zero-sum game?
Zero-Sum game implies that for every winner there is a loser. In the stock-market for eg., there could be just 1 loser (for e.g., company issuing stock) who bought-back 10000 shares and there could be say, 100 winners each selling 100 shares they owned, but the intrinsic value of the company issuing the stock would have increased. If the economy is prospering, then everybody wins in the end. The same is true for Government Bonds (Government can print money to cover the principal if needed), Cash based on a gold-exchange standard and Gold itself all of which together with Stocks form the 4 core sectors of an economy. The real danger one should be afraid of is Inflation (post-war Germany) and Deflation (Japan), because once hyper-inflation or hyper-deflation has set in, it is impossible to control until it totally destroys the monetary-system causing great hardship and misery to the people of that nation. How to avoid it? Return to a gold-exchange standard based monetary system. Decouple
