Asking Stupid Questions: What Is a Stock Market?
So I look right at him and I says to the fish, I says, "what is water?"
I have meditated on the existence, significance, and functionality of the stock market for much of my wake time—it haunts me. Looming overhead at all times of day, the stock market goads me into a sort of filial fear and respect. It is so large, so all-encompassing, and so American that it defies explanation while demanding I internalize its law. Dutifully I heed its beckoning. I contemplate brokering; I wrestle with the sociology of Wall Street; I ruminate on the etymology of corporation; I deliberate initial public offerings; I ponder the utility of trading platforms; I study the anthropology of hedge fund managers; for I am the stock market mystic.
It is said by many that capitalism has lost its way–it has become woke. Agendas are pushed, marketing campaigns propagandize, and products corrupt the youth. This is not the same fundament upon which my grandfather’s pension was built. Where executives once assured investors of profit, they now relay their preferred pronouns; resources once spent on innovation are now funneled into the coffers of various non-profits; where once an earnings report, now a statement on diversity, inclusion, and equity. Investment is no longer simple. The stock market has changed, and here be dragons.
Some are answering this existential crisis by creating indices of good companies in which we can cleanly invest while cataloging those companies peddling in evil. Recently, a renowned investor without a name created Augustine Financial AdvisorsSM. Their chief product is the Fides et Speculatio ScoreSM, which gives investors a detailed report on how well their portfolio aligns with Christian morality. Essentially, Augustine Financial AdvisorsSM and similar noble ventures act as ethical regulators of the stock market. This is good, since the common stock and bundles thereof have become the ordinary means to wealth in the twenty-first century.
Yet the object of their policing still eludes me: what is a stock and what is its market? It is said that public trading originated in the Dutch East India Company more than four centuries ago. Investors were able to buy into a company with the option to sell their “shares” at any time. This trading ability was given in lieu of a guaranteed split of the profits, which always came with business partnerships in the past. As if the sixteenth century were not revolutionary enough, a new breed was hatched at the start of the seventeenth: the silent partner without a care of the inner workings of a company, so long as it grew. Thus, a secondary market was created that allowed for only this type of dormant investment: this all men call the Stock Market.
I hear that women like purses, even fine ones. There is some hierarchy of purse brands; atop sits only a few, down a rung sits several more, and on down, proliferating in number but decreasing in average price. One of these most cherished brands–let us call them Ritzy™–is extremely expensive; the entry level bag costs more than this writer’s motor car.
Now, imagine that I bought my wife a Ritzy Lite™ bag for the low-low price of [TOO OSTENTATIOUS TO WRITE]. Wow, what a deal; a steal, in essence, as the prices recently dropped due to some dip in the Bag Market. I do not fully understand the dip, but talking heads on the television set showed me their charts and it was indeed the perfect time to buy. However, while my wife’s birthday was still three weeks away, the charts flipped and the Bag Market went through the roof, so to speak. I had to sell, the profits were too good to pass over. I found a man wandering the mall on the proper side of the tracks, looking for a birthday gift for his wife. He was an easy mark, and bought the bag for [TOO OSTENTATIOUS TO WRITE PLUS 17.62 PERCENT]. What a profit; looks like my wife and I are taking a spontaneous trip for her birthday (we have just the one child, as we are watching our carbon footprint, and the nanny can get her to school and bed without our presence).
Now imagine that I bought the bag without ever intending to give it to my wife, only to sell it to a blind mall wanderer at some point in the future. Furthermore, what if the bag was a knockoff with only the uncanny resemblance of the Ritzy Lite™? (Think of this knockoff as if it were not counterfeit—there is no fraudulent activity, as Ritzy™ wants my knockoffs to be made and sold at a premium; it somehow benefits their business.) Exchanging knockoffs seems to be a wholly different kind of Bag Market, one that exists as a simulacrum of the real aggregation of buying and selling of Ritzy™ bags. We are told that trading in this Bag Market has a direct connection to Ritzy™ and her competition, but how exactly money flowing through the Bag Market simulacrum relates to the exchange of physical bags, only God knows. Practically, the Bag Market is independent and subject only to knockoff speculators.
Now, imagine a new line of Rainbow Ritzy™ is released at the beginning of Pride Month™ and some percentage of Ritzy™ revenue is guaranteed to an alphabet soup non-profit. Would it be immoral for me to peddle knockoff Rainbow Ritzy™ bags? Probably. What if I maintained my previous trading and never touched a Rainbow Ritzy™ or its knockoff in the Bag Market? My exchanges in the Ritzy™ uncanny valley seem unaffected by the Rainbow Ritzy™ that humanitarian Beverly Hills women now carry around. The only way the Rainbow Ritzy™ would affect my Bag Market activities is if the publicity of the Rainbow Ritzy™ caused much fewer or many more mall-wanderers-turned-investors to speculate in the Bag Market. The Bag Market is my only reality.
However, the Fides et Speculatio ScoreSM will tell me that my conscience is unclean; I cannot profit from trading knockoffs while Ritzy™ is dealing in manifestly evil practices. My knockoff speculation will indirectly fund Ritzy™ wickedness even if I am never involved with a Rainbow Ritzy™ or its knockoff.
Yet evil is the privation of a good, is it not? We need only briefly consult the namesake of the Augustine Financial AdvisorsSM for a citation. But Bag Marketeers are trading Ritzy™ knockoffs without any intent to give them to their wives, only seeking profit. Is this not dealing in a privation of a good? Perhaps my thinking is fuzzy and I am easily rebuffed by the fact that the knockoffs are good insofar as they participate in the market of real bags. If so, I have a business opportunity for the dear reader: let us start knocking off knockoffs to create the untapped Bag Market2. Think of the upside; in a couple of generations we could be the next Rothschilds. Maybe my squaring of the Bar Market seems manifestly absurd (it is) and I will be counseled to simply follow the ordinary means of investment with the Bag Market. Yet Bag Market2 would be justifiable under the same logic of the Bag Market; either way, we are dealing in mere representations of real bags worn by real (albeit cosmetically augmented) Beverly Hills women. For that matter, Bag Marketn is justifiable.
But this is too abstract, let us return to the Bag Market simulacrum. I am feeling increasingly comfy cozy with my conclusion that the Bag Market is peddling in evil. Is the rebuttal that the Bag Market is not dealing in privation but merely a lack of good? That is, are we dealing in a neutral space of products between the real Ritzy™ bags and a total privation of Ritzy™? Is the Bag Market thus a morally neutral playground for profit? Now my back is against the wall: paragraph 1749 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of conscience, can be morally evaluated. They are either good or evil.” There is no such thing as the morally neutral human act.
Let us take a breath and recollect what has been discussed. There are indeed many nefarious activities occurring in extremely influential and powerful corporations. The Fides et Speculatio ScoreSM and similar groups are doing good work to get Christians out of these evil occupations. Yet even in the heyday of supposedly neutral investment, we were dealing in arbitrary representations of real goods solely for profit. That is, stock trading seems intrinsically disordered. At least, it is not clear to this stock market mystic how public trading is innately good. Yet, today it is inconceivable that one would not invest in the stock market. We the frogs are boiling; the water pot’s initial public offering was cool and inviting, a respite for dry and weary travelers. Still, we are being cooked alive.
The innovation of psychology was that we could do away with the ubiquity of guilt and shame by ridding ourselves of sin. Where man was previously counseled to cut off his right hand rather than lose his soul, he was then told that he could keep his soul if he simply used both hands. Similarly, man was previously warned of the danger of riches, but now he easily threads the camel-sized needle of the 401k; and modern prudence demands as much. We need not emulate the widow who gave it all, for she was ignorant of how much more she could have given in the future. Those who wish to be magnanimous must accumulate until account overflow, then give with the liberality of one hundred men. As if the cowardly lion who cannot stand up to a mouse were only given the opportunity to challenge a dragon.