- cross-posted to:
- personalfinance@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- personalfinance@lemmy.ml
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Somehow that 1% is all in the US congress
Weird how they’re so lucky
Not ALL. Some of that 1% just BUY congress.
I used to be into crypto but sold everything a year or two-three ago. Had some spare shit on an exchange and in november I decided to YOLO it into something.
Through some interesting trades I now have 1000% of what I had back in november.
It was pure luck. No amount of reading investment theory could guarantee the same returns as my pure luck had. It is nothing short of gambling.
The US stock market has ALWAYS been a tool for the oligarchy to transfer wealth from the working class to them. That was always it’s intended purpose. And over the years they have added loops and twists and secret doors to hide their otherwise blatant manipulation. You think you OWN your stocks? If it sits with a broker you don’t own shit. You got some IOUs from your broker while they trade “your” stocks to parties that short those stocks, drive down the prices, and bankrupt companies, for their own profit. They do this with your retirement funds, your pensions, your everything. The only way you “own” a stock is with a transfer agent and guess what? It’s illegal for a company to tell you any of that. If a compa y were to tell you you could buy stocks directly from their transfer agent the SEC will convict them for “market manipulation.”
If you play the stock market and win you are either very lucky, or one of the ones actually pulling the strings.
They’re not even subtle about this shit either. To be able to legally invest in more sophisticated investment vehicles, you have to be an accredited investor. To be one, you must have either:
- a yearly income exceeding $200,000
- a yearly joint income with spouse exceeding $300,000
- an individual or joint net worth exceeding $1 million, excluding the value of your home
These requirements essentially hardlock the status to the top 5% in the US. Being one is the only way to buy into venture capital, private equity, hedge funds, etc., where all the real money is made.
The SEC sells this to the public as “keeping the uninformed public safe”, but it actually puts a hard wall on the ability of commoners to make lucrative investments.
I hate how Index Funds are treated as this cosmically new entity. They’re just Mutual Funds you can trade during regular hours. Get over it! (Also the Index they track are just The Market [for whatever thing they’re tracking]) Grinds my g-danged gears to ribbons !
They are different, though moreso historically than currently.
Historically, mutual funds were actively managed, trying to beat the market, which they 1) fail to do and 2) incur high fees; and ETFs were passively managed index funds which didn’t try to beat the market and have comparatively low fees. Nowadays though, there are index mutual funds and actively managed ETFs, so things are blurrier.
There are differences in tax implications as well, though these days maybe it’s less cut & dry; I’m no expert: https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/investment-products/etf/etfs-tax-efficiency
So, look, I’m being a bit hyperbolic here. But I think the opening of your provided source basically goes up the ghost: even as far as the IRS is concerned, they’re basically the same thing. And even then the edge cases are so edge that they’d get thrown out of a bdsm munch for being too horny.
Yes, some mutual funds have tried to beat the ‘market’ (typically S&P500 or sometimes the Dow) but plenty of regular stocks try to beat the market and you don’t hear ‘stocks’ being lambasted in the same way the ETFs are
It’s profiting off of your own exploitation all the way down, but at least with a low cost etf some fund manager isn’t getting quite as large a slice of your work
