david_3011, you miss my point - IF there is a great bear market and say the "investors" lose a, I don't know, a trillion dolalrs, that money did NOT wanish into thin air. If you as an individual had $100,000 in your trading account when you started, and now you have $50,000, that means that someone else made $50,000 that you lost - trading is a zero-sum game, so if someone loses, someone must be winning (i.e. making money) as money cannot disappear into thin air.
look at the futures market - if you are long say ES, someone MUST be short as there are always two parties to the transaction - one is long and betting on the prices rising, and the other is short betting on the prices falling, so one will make money and the other will lose money - that's why if you add the COT positions of 3 type of traders, i.e. Commercials, Large Traders and Small Specs, it's always equal to zero - hence a zero-sum game.
same thing in options market - for every buyer of an options there must a seller (writer) of that option, and hence either the writer (seller) makes money IF the options expire worthles by keeping the premium and the buyer loses by paying that premium, OR the options are exercised and the buyer makes the profit while the seller loses by surrendring the stock hence losing the gain that now went to the buyer that exercised that option. again, it a pure zero-sum game.
and since both futures markets and options markets are derivatives of the stock market, and since the combined futures and options markets are LARGER than the stock market, then by law of arbitrage the stock market MUST be a zero-sum game as well - and we already know this becuase the money neither grows on trees nor does it disappear into thin air.
hence, for every loser there must be a winner, even though in reality in the long run it's probably 80% (or 90%) losers vs. 20% (or 10%) that are winers - again, over the long run.
and yes, not personally, but I know OF great traders that made a killing in the bear market by reading history, for instance starting with "Sell'em" Ben (something) that made a killing in 1929-1932 bear market by walking into his brokers office the day after the Crash yelling "Sell them all, they are not worth a damn" and was one of the most notorious bear pool operators during the 1929-1932 bear market; Paul Tudor Jones made six figures profit (I think something like 600 MILLION) during the 1987 crash; Soros made, what, 2 BILLION during the British Pound selloff/bear market in early 1990s, etc. etc. etc.
it's the small fish that lose BIG during the bear market while the "elite players" make the killing, it's always been like that, and it will always be like that.
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