Wall Street Is Worthless

Wall Street is worthless. There I said it. Wall Street used to be the lifeblood of the economy, moving capital from banks to small businesses to help them grow and become bigger and more profitable, and ultimately hire more people. Well that was what seemed like forever ago. Now, Wall Street is all about high frequency trading and day trading. It's legalized gambling at its best, and stealing at its worst. Everyone and their brother knows that high frequency trading adds little value to the economy, but it exists so firms like GETCO can jump in front of my bid for shares of Apple AAPL or Amazon AMZN. The average person can't set their bid to buy stock at a thousandth of a penny, but HFT's can. I hear all this talk about how HFT's provide liquidity, well that may very well be true, but I'm pretty sure the economy was able to exist well before the invention of high frequency trading. As far as day trading goes, it's nothing but legalized online gambling. What real value does a day trader actually provide? Sure you could make the same liquidity argument that was made for high frequency traders, but I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. Go back to making prudent loans and earning spreads off the curve. Stop trying to bilk me for every damned nickel and dime you can think of. If I want to take my own money out at an ATM, why do you feel the need to charge me $1.50 for it? It's my money I gave to you so you can earn money off it by lending it out to others. You want my first born too? I'm glad that the Durbin Bill is hitting your earnings power. It's not about earnings power, it's about providing a service to the rest of the economy. Something that's long since been forgotten.