[zerof1l]

Did it occur to anyone that stocks and stock-derived products like ETFs and indexes are driven by emotions rather than financials? The company sells its stocks once, typically, and from that moment on, stocks live their own life of speculation by people who mostly have no say in the company. A company might be doing perfectly well, but the stock would fall because some people "think" that the company is doing badly. But if nobody were to act, nothing would happen to the stock. Similarly, people can just decide that a Stock is worth something out of nowhere - GameStop stock.

Essentially, predicting stock movement becomes predicting the sentiment of the people. Instead of "the financial report means the company is doing X", it becomes "if people were to see this financial report, they would react by X".

And this whole thing feels like a big Ponzi scheme. Everyone keeps repeating that you need to invest your money, and that's what essentially makes the market long-term bullish.