It might be radical, but I am with you about the stock market. It's gambling, but unlike casinos, the big players can pay the house to skew the odds. A guy that worked at my lab would day trade. Between experiments he would buy and sell $100k of stock at a time. Sometimes he wouldn't even wait for the order to be complete before he reversed it and started selling. It didn't matter what company he bought stock in, so far as the trading was exhibiting the right kind of activity. Of course, the guy didn't have $100k to make good on these trades. It was all an margin. Once I watched him buy a stock; as the shares rolled in in clumps, the stock went up a few pennies. He then started to sell it, explaining that he made a hundred bucks or so, and that was good enough. That is not investing. That shit has no place in a market where people are investing. The same guy explained to me that the banks manipulate stocks all day long. He said daily activity was pretty much gamed, but no one could control far beyond that.

At the very least, I'd like to see the market changed to where shares had to be held for four months. That starts to get closer to investing.

But, even then, the stock market is ridiculous in the basic fact that inside knowledge is illegal. That almost makes it gambling by default. If you wanted to invest in the tea shop, you could chat with the owner. You could look at his books, and you could get the scoop on what he was planning to do next. Investing requires inside knowledge.