Because financial instruments like stocks are contracts entitling you to future cash flows from the legal entity that issued the stock, and federal securities laws mandate strict disclosure about that entity.

Yes, their value fluctuates on the market from lots of different factors. But the thing you're buying is very real and very well regulated compared to a prediction bet.

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ReflectedImage 3 days ago | parent [-]

"to future cash flows from the legal entity that issued the stock"

In practice, they don't work like that anymore and you get the majority of the value by buying/selling the stock to another party.

Stocks have effectively degraded into gambling style instruments.

	▲	mrandish 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Stocks have effectively degraded into gambling style instruments. That's an overbroad generalization. They can be degraded into effectively being gambling style instruments if you want, but that's NOT what they fundamentally are. Stock and commodity trading markets drive positive-sum capital formation, whereas prediction markets and sportsbooks are zero-sum synthetic side-bets. As someone who once printed original stock certificates for the startup I co-founded in my apartment back bedroom after nervously scribbling a $10,000 personal check to open a company bank account, then years later surrendered those same sheets to an investment banker on the eve of our IPO, the distinction between investing in something I own and gambling on something I don't feels rather concrete.
	▲	throwaway2037 a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I suggest that you read this article from the CFA Institute: "Investing vs gambling: how to tell the difference"[1] [1] https://www.cfainstitute.org/insights/articles/investing-vs-...
	▲	BobaFloutist 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Gambling style instruments that can be trivially used in a way such that they favor the player, and offer some of the best long-term investments there are.