Very rarely have individual investors from the "masses" done well out of the markets. If they did, they were usually upper-middle-class to start with. Until the 80s and the internet age there were distinct barriers to entry. What did happen was fund investment, at one remove - especially pensions, but also products like life assurance and annuities. The funds are one of the groups deploying machine learning now.
> if we want a stock market that has any resemblance of fairness and democratic influence on the economy?
I'm not sure that's the correct place to deploy the fairness levers against overall economic inequality. We come back to the need for a wealth tax to address dangerously large concentrations of capital destabilising the economy like cargo shifting in a plane.
Very rarely have individual investors from the "masses" done well out of the markets. If they did, they were usually upper-middle-class to start with. Until the 80s and the internet age there were distinct barriers to entry. What did happen was fund investment, at one remove - especially pensions, but also products like life assurance and annuities. The funds are one of the groups deploying machine learning now.
> if we want a stock market that has any resemblance of fairness and democratic influence on the economy?
I'm not sure that's the correct place to deploy the fairness levers against overall economic inequality. We come back to the need for a wealth tax to address dangerously large concentrations of capital destabilising the economy like cargo shifting in a plane.