system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
The stock market does more harm than good and shouldn't exist. CMV

1. It pressures companies to increase profits every year, which should not be a motivation for many sectors (healthcare and private prison industry, for example) and also isn't typically feasible for many companies without cutting some corners and/or making shady business decisions.

2. Price isn't directly tied to performance, but *stockholders' views of the performance*. In this sense it isn't a valuable investing tool, it's literally like going to the casino. Oh, the company is doing phenomenal but some country in Europe hit a recession? Guess all stocks have to go down. And more importantly, the stocks are mainly influenced by the huge market movers at the top. A few ultra rich individuals move their money around and they are the main influencer of stock price. They are essentially printing money for them and their friends. These people are the "house", and we are the customers. The house always wins.

I realize that being responsible to shareholders pressures companies to be innovative, but at too high of a cost in my opinion. I think the profit motive alone without the stock market is enough pressure to innovate and be competitive. CMV.
gpt
The prime motivation for any private sector enterprise is going to be profit, whether they are publicly traded or not.

The reason stocks go down when seemingly unrelated events occur far away is that markets are interdependent.  If Britain were to have a massive depression tomorrow, stocks would go down in the US because we have trade interdependencies that would exist whether the stock market was there or not.

There are serious problems with small numbers of very wealthy people influencing the market disproportionately, but to say they "control" the market is not wholly accurate.  Hedge fund managers might be a different story (they essentially treat the stock market like a casino), but again, they cause problems and don't control the whole thing.

In short, the mechanism of the stock market may need reform, but abolishing it wouldn't be practical or helpful.