system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How different would the world be if the stock market never came into existence?
gpt
People owning wealth would have invested in companies that pay dividends anyway, but in a vastly less efficient way.

From this point of view (and excluding financial derivatives and other products, let's consider only the "stock market"), the purpose of the stock exchange is to maximize liquidity and have a place where sellers and buyers meet. This is one of the reason why opening hours exist, for example.

I can provide a similar example to understand. In Switzerland, people move in/out their rentals only at specific times of the year (end of September, end of March). In these two times of the year, the market is very efficient: there is a lot of offer and a lot of demand.

If you need an apartment outside of these dates, you may end up paying a lot (because offer is limited) or to score a great deal (i.e., a bad deal for the landlord), because demand is also limited. This uncertainty indicates that there is inefficiency in the matching process.

What happens if this rule does not existed? People would rent apartments anyway, of course. In the same way people would still be interested in buying a small portion of a company in exchange for a fraction of its profits, and they would find a way to do it.