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Comment by bluefirebrand

6 months ago

Most economic value is not data retrieval

The stock market is the root for the majority of all the world's economic value, and has almost-exclusively been data retrieval since 2001.

  • The stock market is not the root of the value, it's where the value (and plans for generating more) is put to a popularity contest.

    • Determining value of a thing IS how well it does in a popularity contest. That's all economics is. If your apples are fundamentally less sought after - and popular - than my potatoes, your apples are cheaper than my potatoes.

  • Come on. The stock market is not just data retrieval. The statement doesn’t even make sense.

    • It makes perfect sense, and I meant what I said.

      60% of all US equity volume is pure high-frequency trading, and ETFs add roughly another 20% that’s literally just bots responding to market activity and bearish-bullish sentiment analysis on public(?) press releases. 2/3 of trading funds also rely on external data to price in decisions, and I think it was around 90% in 2021 use trading algorithms as their determining factor for their high-frequency trade strategies.

      At its core, the movements that make up the market really IS data retrieval.

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