> Ok but let's be real- buying a stock is not really "creating value". The stock already exists. Company A has issued 100 shares. People are buying/selling it in the market.. no one is creating value there. Sure they may be arbitrarily driving the value up, but that's not creating real value.

If it wasn't possible to resell stocks, capital acquired via stock issuance would be much more expensive. The stock market allows stocks to function as a means of seeding capital.

It's like saying "paying back your mortgage doesn't get buy you a house." The mortgage only exists because it gets paid back.

> Also, I would say the people sitting here buying and selling stocks are most of the time 99% pure speculation. They have zero control over what actually happens in the company. Sure they can do "research" and guess what might happen.. but it's still nearly all gambling.

Yes, which general advice is to spread your capital across the whole market. It used to be that you had to spend your capital building up your own business, which is even worse than trying to pick your own stocks. Now you can diversify your risk world-wide, as to avoid any sort of local calamities.