Shouldn't everyone buy stocks and just generally play in the stock market...

Shouldn't everyone buy stocks and just generally play in the stock market? That'll boost the economy but it seems like most common people don't know how to or don't bother. Shouldn't it be taught in highschool?

yes, i think everything about personal finance should be taught in school so that kids dont end up fucking themselves once they become old enough to start controlling their own finances.
after that class if some kids want to further pursue learning about stocks and shit then there should also be a course for that

but ultimately, people dont invest in stocks because they think it's rocket science and would be too difficult to learn how to do successfully:
>"that's too hard for me and much too risky, i'll just buy this guaranteed investment certificate that my bank advisor suggested that will give me a whopping 1% in 3 years, that's safer and easier"

Try telling everyone in your family that you trade stocks for a living. There is your answer.
The stigma is real.
>HUURR I LOST MOST OF MY SUPERANNUATION IN THAT LAST CRASH SO I SOLD IT ALL ANYWAYS TO CUT MY LOSSES

Most common people would lose money, get angry, and quit.

And they did, and that is why they dont buy stocks and generally play in the stock market.

Common People:
>98 average IQ
>Average household income 52k/year
>Not a lot saved up
>In debt

doesn't really seem compatible with stock market.

I agree, but the average IQ is 100. That's how the scale works. A score of 100 is the 50th percentile. Unless you're trying to say the US average is 98 compared to the entire world.

every pleb ive ever worked with had too much exposure in aapl
peak of bulltrap is near too

no he was saying that 'common people' have an average iq, not 'average people'. He then specified what he means by 'common people'

What do you mean by "boost the economy"? Increasing the demand for corporate stocks obviously will inflate stock prices but why do you think this is necessarily a good thing? It's in share-holders interest to decrease wages which are a mere expense to them and direct funds away from reinvestment out of profit towards paying out large dividends.

What does finance produce... just debt and unnecessary over-head. The Wall Street/City of London model of finance in reality has little to do with real investment in actual productive goods but just increasing the mass of intangible pecuniary assets. When a company like facebook goes public why/what do they actually need the funds for? It's not like they're a 19th century rail-road company.

Stock and bond markets have been horrible at actually allocating real capital and creating jobs... by recycling savings into real-estate and driving a speculative stock bubble you create an illusion of a boost but when everyone tries to actually cash out their paper wealth into tangible goods the illusion will have to pop.

In Australia, you're required by law to invest 9% of your earning into the stock market

Everyone *should* but the common person lacks the discipline in order to actually generate a meaningful return on their investment.

This usually happens when people purchase shares in companies without understanding the underlying fundamentals on what makes a company worth purchasing, and instead make their decisions off of equally uninformed friends or the paid shills on finance news networks.

Mindless consumers are good for short-term because they'll buy the new cars, new tvs, new phones until they rack up debt and the economy crashes and burns

Government doesn't wanna teach people in high school because spending keeps the economy going. It isn't smart a few years down the road, but what does it matter? That government won't be in charge by then.

I wish personal finance was a mandatory course (1 for elementary, 1 for high school)

Probably, but must normal folks are like me and dont have time like all the students here to learn all this shit. So we leave our savings on our bank accounts. Yep life sucks.

Consumers are in the final analysis who should be directing and organizing the economy. What you're advocating is central planning of the economy by the people who under-write, analyze, trade, and sell securities. Spending, in a capitalist economy, is the only way to indicate what is demanded. If consumers are not spending then who are making the decisions on what is to be produced? But I guess it's a good idea for the poor to borrow from the wealthy at interest to "invest" in the stock market to try to get a claim on corporate profit as the economy becomes more and more mere capitalization upon intangible assets with no physical basis and less employment opportunities.

Probably, but a lot of people can careless about the stock market, even those who like Business sometimes don't give a shit for it. It's a lot of research work, a lot of decision making that you have to weight with multiple sources and tips to figure out what's worth buying, whats worth selling, whats worth trading, and what's worth holding on to. The average American doesn't even know how supply and demand works, I doubt they can grasp the stock market.

Yeah this is a pretty good point, saving money is the worst thing that can happen to an economy. But personal finance isn't all about being as cheap and saving as much as humanly possible. Even the government can benefit from people not living paycheck to paycheck.

Personal Finance is a mandatory course taught in every public high school in the US. What fucking country are you from that you don't get taught basic shit like that?

>Personal Finance is a mandatory course
It is?
I thought that shit went the way of cursive.

Whether personal finance is taught or not isn't really the issue. It is *what* is taught in personal finance. And it sucks.

Need proof? Ask people of virtually any educational level (high-school dropouts to college grads) where money comes from. They will tell you that it is printed by the government.

Next try to explain how all new fiat currency is actually generated from debt. Most people will call you a liar or uninformed.

Public education is about feeding children their daily dose of blue pills on the issues that actually affect their lives, like the economy.

I don't mean they should take their money and invest in the stock market. Just that they shouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck. Put some money into a savings account or mutual fund or roth/tfsa instead of buying the next iphone or a brand new car. If people were more educated with their money we could've avoided the 2008 collapse with sub-prime loans and bad credit. It's a vicious cycle and when it happens people wonder why it happened.

Never in my country (Canada). None of our business courses are mandatory here

>play in the stock market
>play

fuck off