8 ways investing is broken

The Dow isn't up...it's back to pre crash levels of 4 years ago. Some of my wifes stocks are still struggling to recover.

Sure..buy and hold....how much of a hero would you have been if you told someone that 5 years ago?  God forbid you needed to use some of that principle a year after the market took its giant dump in '08.   Yea..I know..don't invest money you can't afford to lose. So much for 95% of most peoples savings.

The sad truth is it could ALL vanish tomorrow...and no one would be accountable. The stock market today is no better than any casino. Place your bets...

The stock market was created to give companies access to money for growth. Not as a way for people to make money from buying low and selling high or for people to make money off people trading stocks.  In today`s world companies no longer need this sort of tool.  The stock market has become a legal pyramid scheme.

Stay the course, your article is on the right track. So the textbook response to recession is buy into it and hold until recovery, but anyone with half a brain could see there is more happening this time. We have seen massive job terminations and a sell-off of assets and aspects to foreign interests who also import what we lost. That's not recession, it's terrorism. The incredible growth in the markets since is predicated on GW Bush redesigning the currency so he could authorize more of it and raised the debt ceiling repeatedly to accommodate it. Simply, instead of using the additional dollars to restructure the dynamics of Main Street, banks- including financial houses that are now banks- invested all that cash overseas. I have no clue what pocketprotector and the other pickle juice drinkers are talking about in the comments below mine. There are indeed at least 8 ways the markets are artificially inflated and a threat to national stability. We have NO Main Street right now and will be forced to replace workers in the workforce (like a time out swap of talent) to create the type of revenues needed to cover the interest on what we owe. Job 'creation' won't cut it. Since we realized such moves in 2008, the national divide has become a chasm. Review your history. We'll need to either remove about 360 million people from America so that the remaining 40 million have the false elitist economy they are driving us to or a pimple popping event that takes them down so 100 million families can restore the type of America we once were. Meanwhile... China has us in a bind and Europe (where all of Bush's fiat money is buried in bad debt) will go bust before the year end. These things said, what sort of idiot believes he can hoard metals, load up on stock & bonds and keep crapping on the rest of the nation, while being too old and out of shape to fight his way out of a paper bag? Our best bet is to trash the vessel that breeds the control and manipulation as we recognize our peril and soberly start back up from the bottom of this Abyss we are in.

Close the banks. End the Federal Reserve (pretty sure this one got really popular yesterday) and get rid of Wall Street. It's about job recovery... right now, and a true reconciliation. The Dow isn't worth 2,000, it has no value to the People of the United States any longer.

The stock market is America....it is where companies get the money to expand and create jobs.

With a market that is viewed as 'fixed' by many/most investors the money will not be there for corporate expansion...JOBS.

What is needed is a way to basically eliminate 'skimming' money out of the market by flash traders and short traders,particularly​ the naked short selling. At the same time enhance the SEC's ability to investigate all other fraudulent trades.

This is easy to do, just add a one cent per share 'user fee' (this is not a tax) for every share traded. The fee would go to the SEC for enforcement of security laws.

This would virtually eliminate 'flash trading', and most short selling and provide for orderly markets, that would restore faith in the markets by retail investors..