How to mislead the public: any marketplace can be called free as long as one does not define what freedom means. Indeed, we must first define freedom before we apply such a lofty attribute and promise to a marketplace that, using the most basic definition of freedom, fails to meet the very obligations, values, and inherent renewability of freedom.
The NASDAQ has just re-balanced its 100-index, clearly afraid of Apple’s impact on the stock market. That seems like an innocent action to preserve the integrity of the stock market. However, it is the opposite. For the NASDAQ herewith manipulates the stock market in a way it, the intermediary, not the participants see fit.
So much for a free-market system that is supposed to be self-regulating. Yet, there are many other reasons why stock markets the way they are set up today, fail to meet the litmus test of freedom. Not in the least because stock markets favor short-sellers with specialized trading techniques over the general public. And hence I pity the fool who invests in them.
Do you need more proof that stock markets are artificial constructs, in violation of the most rudimentary principles of freedom, in which you and “the market” has no control? I can give you that proof.
