Stock Market Speculation-A Modern Religion!
Yes, a religion! Why do I say that? Because whenever you challenge it, people get really upset! Either they block you, stop talking to you or accuse you of arrogance. I even had one woman call me “crazy” which was , in fact, an honour because that is exactly what they called the Prophets of old, Peace be upon them all, whenever they revealed the Truth.
So all around us we can see the rituals of this religion. Checking the figures at night and at the beginning of the day, all the main news stations covering the ups and downs of the Dow-Jones and the Nasdaq, special TV shows and even whole stations devoted to the financial markets, people with their own 401 k’s (in the U.S.A.) and RRSPs in Canada. Trump going up and down with the waves. People jumping up and down when the figures go up like Evangelicals at a Church meeting and pulling their hair out when it goes into bear market and a crash seems imminent. This is the modern world. Finances rein supreme! .Even wars, like that in Iran, seem to be mostly about fuel prices. This is the modern world-in all its craziness!
In fact this religion is the love of wealth, something all our religious teachers from the Buddha to the Prophet Mohammed saws have warned us about . But who needs religion when greed is the driving force lol?!
Personal experience: Personally, I have not had a lot of experience in this area. The one time I got involved was just before the crash of 2008 where I lost about 20% of my RRSPs. And no, that is NOT why I am writing this article. I am fully aware, as all my investor friend enthusiasts like to remind me, that the market has done well since! And I am able to separate myself from my personal losses and have been doing that work (we call it “jihad-a-nafs” in Sufism) for a long time.
I also have two brothers who have been MBA professional portfolio managers, both of them heavily involved in investments for decades for large investment firms! Both have become increasingly disillusioned with this type of activity. One of them left a large Canadian bank and has largely been involved in property development since (definitely a lot more socially productive then betting on the future value of a company share!). He left saying “this is simply sophisticated gambling” I couldn’t agree more! The other brother left a six-figure job in a large investment firm and has downsized considerably since them. Neither of them have an elevated view of their profession! Then again I am not much impressed by doctors these days lol.At least the profession is potentially helpful-if you can stay away from the drug company propaganda which most can’t as it has permeated the entire profession!
The triggering event:
I have had my suspicions for years about this kind of activity but never really looked into it in depth. Then I ran into a blog called “New Polity” And three individuals, young, smart, well-informed and most importantly conscienciously Christian and I found what I was looking for. By contrast when I looked up books on Amazon I could not find a single one that was critical of this kind of speculation. All the books were about how to make more money on the stock market! Surprise , surprise lol!
The three people involved in the discussion were a former Wall Street banker, William Bednarz and two podcasters , Marc Barnes and Jacob Imam. And this podcast contained more truth (all of which I had intuitively felt) than anything I had seen previously. So here are the bullet points of their discussion!
: The first company to sell shares on the market was the Dutch East India Company in 1602! The American Stock exchange was founded in 1792 with the Buttonwood Agreement
: Before that all through the Middle Ages and before, there was no distinction between a shareholder and a partner i.e. every person involved in the company had to participate in it’s management, it’s decision-making and its work . I call that “Real Investment”..
:in the United States 10% of the wealthiest people own 93% of the stock market! The lower 50% own 1%! i.e the stock market is contributing seriously to the disparity in wealth. As say the Marxists and others: ”The Rich get richer and the poor get poorer”!
Some notable quotes:
Charles Dickens:
Share ownership is perverse and is used to oppress everyone beneath them
:A Papal encyclical( Jean-Paul II
“The ownership of the means of production becomes illegitimate when it is not utilized or when it starts to impede the work of others in an effort to gain a profit which is not the result of the overall expansion of work and the wealth of society (i.e. when it does not increase social productivity”)
P.S. It must be said here that the Catholics are ahead of the game in their concerns. Two popes have written encyclicals about the sub ect and it seems that the current pope is working on one himself.
Meanwhile the Muslims and Jews and other Christians believe that the only important thing is not to invest in companies that are producing sinful material like gambling and pornography and alcohol for Muslims. What a narrow, superficial view of things! :
:In a study done by the National Bureau of Economics, it was found that between 1989-2017 the stock market value increased by 100% while the GDP increased by only 25% and part of that 25% was in financial activity! –by definition non-productive!
So what does that mean! That the stock market is in no ways a reflection of the actual activity and buying stocks is a speculative adventure that in no way benefits anyone outside of the investor.
: Given that the stock market value increases make more money available, by definition this investment increases inflation with all the negative downsides of that reality!
:Second quote from the Pope! 1986 “Merchants who desire scarcity and rising prices cannot bear to to be the only ones buying and selling so they encourage others to do so, in order to sell more dearly and buy more cheaply”
Christian fundamentalist view: Not to be easily dismissed! Any superfluous wealth we have belongs to the poor.-not to be used to make thr rich richer but to be used to help society .In Islam we have 2.5% zakat which is a minimalist requirement. The Christians had the “Dime” which was 10% But actually from a moral point of view the entire amount should be put to good use . An example of that may be the philanthropic activities of people like the Rockefellers and the Melons and more recently Bill Gates and Warren Buffet although in many of these cases the philanthropy ended up being self-serving and ideological. At least they started on the right foot lol
: Most insightful thoughtful people( including my brothers lol ) have seen through the justification of these investments as “efficient allocation of resources” as they teach in MBA schools across the country. That ranks up there with vaccines being”safe and effective” i.e more B.S. from the sold-out intellectual class!
The Buddhist Contribution. The Buddha taught the eight-fold path and one of those principles was “Right Vocation”. This is how it is defined: In Buddhism, a “right vocation” or career is known as Right Livelihood (Sammā Ājīva). It is the fifth part of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. It means earning your living in a peaceful and honest way without causing harm, cheating, or bringing suffering to other living beings.
I would add in here, that the activity needs to be socially productive . We could also add the Christian idea that “You shall gain they daily bread through the sweat of thy brow” i.e you should work for your money-not simply buy an investment product and wait for it to grow. That can legitimately be called “profiteering”. So if we are going to do a serious deep dive here, we would have to look for intentionality. No-one should have any doubts here! The intentionality is making profit-not contribuating to the social good,
What is “Kosher investing then?
Since most people are not willing to simply give all their superfluous wealth to the poor, what remains as ethical investments. I see three avenues
!0 Real investments like in the good olde days! One begins a project or an organization that contribute to the social good. The bloggers called these “societas”-groups of people working together to build something useful! One invests one’s time and effort and money into this project or company. And one participates in the day-to-day management. Ironically, some may think, this is how Elon Musk and Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg got to be billionaires-not by investing in other company’s shares and waiting to reap the rewards but by developing their own products! What they do with their money afterwards is another matter!
2) Property development– buying land or real estate and using it productively. Both of my last two spiritual teachers Sheikh Nazim and Sheik Abu-Qassim were into that. The former bought olive groves and the latter bought land to develop into date farms!
3) Sheikh Nazim, being an Ottoman at heart, liked the idea of buying gold lol. Gold used to be the standard currency before the American dollar took over.
Much, much more to say like about the doubly corrupting effect of bitcoin investment which adds the dubiousness of crypto to its non-productivity socially but let’s leave it there for now!
Salaams, Sufi Ibrahim