Doesn't that pretty much characterise all for-profit companies?
- We use cash to buy circuit boards, screens, enclosures, etc, write software, and sell mobile phones.
- We use cash to rent a building, order pallets of inventory, and sell that inventory locally to walk-in customers.
- We use cash to buy shares, hold onto them for a bit, and sell those same shares and make money off the spread.
I'm not making any kind of comment at all about the value of market makers, just... those three businesses feel like they're different models.
Not exploiting teenagers in some 3rd world country?
Not gambling with your pension?
Not manipulating some physical commodity like oil?
What’s the problem here?
> Not gambling with your pension?
> Not manipulating some physical commodity like oil?
There is no reason to believe #1 and #3 aren't true, and I should very much suspect they are. #2 is not possible as far as I can tell, I agree there.
> - We use cash to buy shares, hold onto them for a bit, and sell those same shares and make money off the spread.
Those two sound like pretty much the same thing.
In the case of a trading shop, the stuff they do is playing the market liquidity, collecting interest, arbitrage, etc...
Sure there are some evil ones, but other businesses have those too.