Casino Royal

[Kapitan]

Skybird i think a film called the big short might interest you, i have seen it a couple of times myself its quite good.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/

With reference to the markets (i do use them) there is so many financial creations are we even sure what we are buying? the capitalist system thrives on debt, in fact it wasn't until the Nixon era that America's economy de coupled from a gold standard (the UK abolished this in 1931)

So what is it today? well today we don't have money (the term is misappropriated) in the traditional sense, money is an item which can be traded for something else, we use currency.

Our currency is not backed by any tangible asset such as gold or silver, it is merely a medium of exchange, its a piece of paper / metal / plastic bearing a promise to service a debt so basically were walking around with a bunch of government issued IOU's. (top of any UK bank note it says " I promise to pay the barer the sum of")

Banks make their funds by investing the IOU's into projects and markets for a return of even more IOU's but here's the catch, when we go into a Bank and buy a house we put down a deposit of IOU's and the bank lends us more IOU's to buy an tangible asset, we just have to pay each month.
The bank then packages these mortgages up throws them into a clearing house and credit agency re packages them and sells them as securities.

The bank then hedges and buys a credit default swap against the mortgage them sells it in other swaps.
So you see the entire system is some what convoluted but that is just one aspect of the market.

I have slowed down trading over the last few years now its more just playing with loose change so its not a massive thing for me any more, I have been using the stock markets since I was 14, yes ive made money yes i have also lost money.

Personally I prefer trading commodities (specifically Gas, Oil, Gasoline, Corn and Their options) and using stocks as a long term backing to build equity in the platform.
I trade using a CFD (contract for difference) it isn't the best but as a retail non professional trader unfortunately its one of the few places out there that the ordinary man can trade without the Hassel of going through a broker and have tens of thousands invested.

Can I see where JP Morgan went wrong to loose $2bn yes absolutely, the markets have been volatile recently and the worst bit is there's no let up, on the flip side though the nice jump in oil the other day netted me a nice profit time to flip it.