Stock Market Qs

Roundtable Discussion – Stock Market Questions

Recently at a New England Storehouse meeting (N.E.C.A.P.), Maja Corlett asked the simple question: Is investing in the stock market gambling? Is it sinful?

It prompted a good conversation. Tomorrow Maja will join us and we will broaden and continue that conversation. Some of our leadership will share their perspective (Gary Crawford, Gregg Healey, others).

For the part 2 to this discussion see : Stock Market Alternative

We are a learning community led by the Holy Spirit. All questions and perspectives are valid. We will endeavor to share and teach on the New Breed of Business biblical understanding of the stock market as part.

Questions

• Investing in the stock market gambling?
• Investing in the stock market sinful?
• Investing in the stock market wise?
• Should I use a financial planner?
• If I have a 401k or IRA, what can I invest in other than the markets?
• What are the alternatives to investing in the Stock Market?
• If we come out of the stock market, should we stop paying taxes?
• BYO (Bring Your Own Questions)

Stock Market Fundamentals

• When you buy stock, you legally become a partner in that company
• When you buy index funds, ETFs, mutual funds you are legally partnering with many companies simultaneously, but it is somewhat obscured by the fact it is one level down in an investment structure
• Financial markets are driven up and down by many forces (fundamentals, technical, future growth prospects), but those forces include fear and greed
• Companies are either privately owned, or “publicly traded”. If they are publicly traded, they are part of the “stock market”
• Investors in the stock markets include: individuals through apps (eg, Robinhood), individuals through stock brokers and financial planners (eg, Morgan Stanley), pension funds, endowments, insurance companies, banks, governments
• Premise that the stock market will always go up, sometimes referred to as a buy and hold strategy

Stock Market Trends

• Depersonalization of investing and governance
• Leverage buyouts, financial sponsors, distressed investing
• EPS driven governance
• Whitewashing moral ethical shortcuts in name of “shareholder’s interests”
• Codifying Milton Freedman’s phrase “the business of business is business”
• Removal of God and religion from “business” in publicly traded companies
• Corporate adoption of secular values and causes fill void – BDS, ESG, Pride, Choice

Biblical Considerations

• Free-will / freedom – Gal 5:13
• Be careful with who you form partnerships – 2 Cor 6:14-18
• Come out of Babylon – Rev 18:4
• Do not profit from the poor – Prov 22:16; Ezek 22:29
• Rest from labors every seven years – Deut 25:4
• Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy – Exodus 20:8
• Do not charge interest to fellow believers and the poor – Deut 23:19

Commonly Accepted Business Practices

• Customer Service departments trained to extract revenue, given little authority to help people
• Cell Phone Companies – cut off service; won’t extend credit to the poor; people in financial difficulty
• Cable Companies – hidden fees, practices designed to enslave poor and elderly people with large monthly bills
• Hospital billing practices
• Bank loan interest and fee practices for the poor
• Credit card companies practices of capturing people in fees and interest
• Pharmaceutical company predatory pricing
• Technology companies data ownership legal practices maintaining rights to terminate services / social networks

Stock Market Lingo

• Bulls and Bears
• Animal Spirits
• Fear and Greed
• FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
• Stock tip
• Insider trading
• Non-public information
• Mutual Funds
• ETFs
• Long and short
• Day Trading
• Hedge Funds

Factors to Consider

• Have Wall Street and the Stock Market become part of Babylon?
• What if the US financial markets are being judged through several more waves of trouble / crashes?
• The debt load is growing and is unsustainable
• Babylon enslaves people in its economic system
• The US pioneered financial markets (capitalism) have becoming more corrupted, yet more widespread, representing 70% plus of the US and Western economies
• Revelation 18 is an economic description of this coming judgment and destruction
• Revelation 13 points to a day of not being able to buy and sell in the nations of the world unless you pledge yourself to be a member of the system (worship, bow to the statue of Neb/ Antichrist)
• Concentration of power
• Concentration of wealth
• all roads in success in usa funded through VC, PE, individual investors lead to IPO stock market or sale to publicly traded company

Prophetic encounters regarding Investing

• “Before I invest in something, I invest in someone”
• “Giving + Blessing = Enterprising”
• “This is the beginning, not the end” (regarding the 2008 financial crisis)
• “I care more about how you make your money, than what you do with it”

Alternative to Stock Market

What are the alternatives to investing in the publicly trading of stocks and financial markets (credit based financial systems)? Read more about the “Storehouse Vision” here.

Background Discussions/Pages

• GameStop
• GameStop Part 2
• Watch Japan
• Pennies on the Dollar
• Financial Market Update
• Precious Metals
• Come out of Babylon

Great testimony God meeting financial needs