There is a heartbreaking statistic: in the stock market, 17% of people consistently make a profit, while the other 83% are losing money. On the surface, this seems to be a matter of individual ability, but upon deeper reflection, things are not that simple.

The stock market is essentially a zero-sum game. The money one person earns must come from another person's pocket. The total market returns are always fixed; wealth is merely redistributed, and no new value is created out of thin air. This is not a bug but an inevitable design feature of the entire financial system.

Looking at history makes this clear. During the rise of Wall Street in the United States, the streets were filled with crazy speculative bubbles. Railway stocks and canal stocks attracted countless retail investors. The most absurd thing was the circulation of prospectuses for ridiculous projects like "Railroads to the Moon." What was the result? Many fictitious projects absorbed social funds and then collapsed outright. What does this tell us? The market has never been designed for fair play; instead, it leverages information asymmetry and rule biases to allow a few people to systematically transfer wealth.

The truly frightening aspect is the societal consequence. When financial activities completely detach from the real economy, excessive speculation will directly exacerbate wealth inequality. The 2008 global financial crisis is a typical example—financial derivatives flooded the market, causing the assets of ordinary families to shrink significantly, while institutional investors profited immensely through short-selling mechanisms. This unfair distribution not only weakens overall consumer spending but also easily triggers a trust crisis. Remember the "Occupy Wall Street" movement? That was a direct protest against the confrontation between financial elites and ordinary people.

However, this does not mean we are denying the value of the market itself. The true value of the market lies in optimizing resource allocation. Even if wealth is transferred in the process, directing capital toward efficient enterprises can promote technological innovation and industrial upgrading. The problem is not the existence of the market, but the large gap in capabilities between the game’s rule designers and participants.