Comment Re:Profits, but for whom? (Score 1) 624
Efficient price discovery is the purpose of the market. Liquidity is essential to that end. Traders provide that liquidity and, overall, the market benefits because of it.
Perhaps the problem is that what we really want is efficient value discovery. Price and value tend to diverge if you have a whole bunch of players betting on what the value will be in the future, because the underlying mechanisms creating value (manufacturing, development, etc.) can't change that quickly, but the market perception ("price") can change very quickly.