[matred]

I’m not sure you’re reading that correctly, since the response concerned the idea that the core goal of financial markets is X, and you respond with a statement on equities markets, which by definition only concern financing companies.

Equities markets are a piece of the pie. The largest, by far, for the kind of HFT we’re talking about, but a fraction of financial activity.

The core goal of financial markets is to gather and match prospective buyers and sellers so that trading can occur.

[notahacker]

I was replying to a post talking about secondary market share trading replying to a post about the value of liquidity in AAPL, so in context it seemed clear equities were the market under discussion

Obviously true that financial markets for commodity futures etc have different functions, though a similar logic applies to them (the extra liquidity in commodities futures markets is useful to the extent it facilitates real world production decisions)