This is essentially a gambling platform because at no point does any currency exchange take place.
You think you might've just explained what derivatives are.
That's pretty much Wall Street in a nutshell - gambling with other people's money.
The worst part is the people involved think they are financial geniuses - masters of the universe - instead of welfare queens.
They lobbied for changes to tax laws to create the 401k, then when this caused trillions of dollars to flow into, and bid up the price of, equities they interpreted this as evidence that stock traders were financial gods.
It was just the demographic realities of the baby boom coming into their peak earning years though, as well as the tax code shovelling a bunch of money into the markets that otherwise would have been used for something else.
Then on the occasions when your bets don't work out, a primary dealer can just borrow unlimited dollars into existence from the federal reserve, or get laws changed to work in your favour at everybody else's expense. Or just get bailed out by taxpayers.
It's all a huge scam, which makes the inflated egos of traders particularly comical.
