> Though the poker table analogy is better than most gambling analogies, I still don't think it's fair. Poker is a negative sum game: you can only win when others lose, and even then the house takes a cut.
>
> The stock market, however, can be a positive sum game. Stocks can increase in value without anyone losing anything; the entire point of capitalism is that new wealth is regularly created.
>

Right. The stock market is not zero-sum because there are more people long than short any given security. If prices go up, wealth is created. That doesn't apply to bond, options and futures markets, which are zero-sum (negative-sum if you count brokers as the "house").

But that wasn't really my point. The point of my poker analogy is that some people can play and reasonably expect to come out ahead in the long term. That's the major difference between the NYSE and other casinos. The fact that their profit doesn't have to come at the expense of others is incidental.

^v^:)^v^
F"option trader"B