What Does Wall Street Even Do?

What Does Wall Street Even Do?

Like, really? What is it that they do? I was reading an article about how a lot of the Wall Street trading was being done by computer algorithms that once in a while just flip their shit and cause a sort of 2 second long stock market crash. Then it corrects itself and carries on. No one really understands how these algorithms actually work, but they're spending a lot of labor trying to just shave microseconds off the response times of these machines to better be able to generate more money in trading.

This should really make you reconsider and at least realize how ridiculous and useless Wall Street actually is. They are less than useless, really, they produce nothing of value and are the wealthiest people. Even worse is that their fuck ups destroy the economy leading to homeless families in a society that has empty houses.

I really can't think of a single productive thing that Wall Street traders do anymore. The institution exist for the sake of the institution existing. At one point it had something related to financing and paying dividends. Now it is just a casino game for our retirement accounts so that they maybe will keep up with inflation. This whole thing could be done in a more efficient manner if it were not up to the chaos of the free market and sociopaths Rand crazed bastards and literal robots trying to game the system by a few fractions of a second.

The general answer when asked this question is usually "We provide liquidity to help people and corporations hedge exposure to prices and therefore reduce risk" when you talk about the commodity side - which happens to be one of the worst sides possible.

As best as I can figure it, they may as well be wizards in towers conjuring vast fortunes, engaging in global telepathy while casting nations into ruins. At least LARPers aren't destroying the economy with their fake swords.