Can everyday people profit from unexpected world events?
"NASDAQ has Pre and After market : NASDAQ Trading Schedule Regular Trading Session Schedule The NASDAQ   Stock Market Trading Sessions (Eastern Time) Pre-Market Trading Hours from 4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.   Market Hours from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.   After-Market Hours from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.   Quote and order-entry from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.   Quotes are open and firm from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. You can trade in Pre/After Market but liquidity is very low. If an ""unexpected world events"" occurs, the volume/liquidity will most certainly increase. Another example is the Forex Market that's open 24/7 around the world. As one major forex market closes, another one opens. According to GMT,   for instance, forex trading hours move around the world like this:   available in New York between 01:00 pm – 10:00 pm GMT; at 10:00 pm GMT   Sydney comes online; Tokyo opens at 00:00 am and closes at 9:00 am   GMT; and to complete the loop, London opens at 8:00 am and closes at   05:00 pm GMT. This enables traders and brokers worldwide, together   with the participation of the central banks from all continents, to   trade online 24 hours a day. src" The NYSE is not the only exchange in the world (or even the only one in the USA). Amazingly, the London stock exchange works on London time, the Shanghai exchange works on Shanghai time and the Australian stock exchange works on Sydney time. In addition futures exchanges work overnight. In the UK there are spread betting firms (essentially financial bookmakers) that will take large bets 24x7. Plus, interbank forex is open 24x7 anyway. And there are a wide array of futures markets in different jurisdictions. There are plenty of ways to find organizations who are willing to take the opposite position that you do, day or night, provided that you qualify.
"Then my 100% honest answer would be the same. But an insignificant and uncorrectable number of people. Not that anyone going without healthcare isn't concerning, just that it will happen no matter what path we choose, and a free market diminishes it the most. Some people won't act in their own interests. Did you read the original article I posted? It appears you did not, I encourage you to do so.   Everyone would like to receive ""free"" stuff, no surprise.   I'm coming from an honest admission that the market would and should provide a variety of differing qualities of healthcare to best serve everyone and their differing valuation of their health. Government cannot do that, but a free market can. Like shoes or anything else. We can't all afford italian leather loafers, but most people can get shoes of all sorts of sizes and styles and colors. That's because the market works. Let the market work in healthcare, and you get the absolute fewest people without it, and they can spend what they want on it. People who exercise every day will probably spend more on it, those who drink and smoke everyday probably won't, and that's not my business. Or yours, quite frankly." Stock values are generally reflective of a company's overall potential; and to some extent investor confidence in the prospect of a continued growth of that potential. Sales over such a short period of time such as a single weekend do not noticeably impact a stock's valuation.  A stock's value has more to do with whether or not they meet market expectations for sales over a certain period of time (generally 1 quarter of a year) than it does that they actually had sales (or profits) on any given day. Of course, catastrophic events, major announcements, or new product releases do sometimes cause significant changes in a stock's value.  For this reason you will often see stocks have significant volatility in periods around earnings announcements, merger rumors, or when anything unexpected happens in the world that might benefit or hurt their potential sales and growth. But overall a normal, average weekend of sales is already built into the price of a stock during normal trading. "Completely false. I recognize the impact that energy has on everyday life across the globe. Your reasoning is fundamentally flawed because you think oil or ""oil lust"" is the reason. The desire for cheaper energy is the driving factor, it just so happens that oil is the cheapest. If the roles were reversed and solar was more profitable, there would be the exact same counter movement in support of oil. You don't understand the rules of the game and that's why you're willing to throw billions of other people's dollars at the problem to change the rules to fit your desires.   And you can prove me wrong right now for calling you an uniformed ideologue by just saying, ""it's about being as efficient as possible to produce the most energy for people to live their lives. No one person or industry should have an advantage over someone else; therefore all energy subsidies should be eliminated in the interest of progress."" But you won't." This article seems to be less about how Amazon will transform the industry and more about how they can buy their way into anything.   Before we all wet ourselves over this purchase, let's see how they do in the food business. It is a tough, low margin world where goods can't sit on a warehouse shelf forever.   It is good for competition, but it ma more pragmatic about this. It took Amazon 15 years to be profitable in the low margin world. I am sure smarter people than me are driving this, but this is no slam dunk.   People that shop at Costco, Trader Joe's, Safeway or where ever are not going to change because Amazon owns WF. My problem with your argument is the idea that we make a decision and reap the benefits sometime in the near and measurable future.  Where as the actual outcome of our decision may not be realized until many other decisions are made afterwards, thus making the number of permutations very high.  While I agree there tend to be people who can make better or more informed decisions given a situation, I think you give them entirely too much credit given the long run possibilities of outcomes.  My ultimate point being, no matter who you are, you are limited to being able to consider so many steps ahead or combinations at a single time.  And there are certainly people who make bad choices but get good outcomes, and vice versus.  Since we don't see one person, or a specific model for making decisions I have to believe that one simply does not exist.  So call it luck, kismet, or informed decisions, I think at a certain point people make decisions and reap the rewards of those decisions independently.  Maybe more often than not the informed win, but there have been plenty of smart people out there, with brilliant models and ideas, that go down in flames.  Likewise I've meet some pretty dumb people who happen to be at the right place at the right time and turn the right knob.  Not sure I was clear in explaining my point, its been a long day. "Yes, but that's not what I'm getting at.  Your story made sense up to the ""enterprising person"" part.  The notes represented obligations secured by apples (or rights to future apples).  Regardless of the secondary note trading, at the end of the day, one could approach issuer of the note, the apple farmer, and redeem (or attempt to redeem) the note for the underlying apples.  The enterprising person's notes are different.  The holder of the new notes cannot approach the priest and demand anything.  The story doesn't explain this critical transition, which is probably the most important part.  You suggest the problem in your response above when you say ""it's just no longer pegged specifically to one grower's apples.""  The new notes aren't ""pegged"" to anything.  That's a huge but unexplained shift, a shift I called a ""gap in the internal logic of this story.""  [Edit: In other words, with the apple notes, there was an option.  One could trade the apple notes with others or get apples.  With the new notes, there is no option.  You must trade the notes.  There is no underlying good or service to redeem.]" Say I am an employee of Facebook and I will be able to sell stares at enough of a profit to pay of my mortgage and have enough money left to cover my living costs for many years. I also believe that there is a 95% chance that the stock price will go up in the next few years. Do I take a 5% risk, when I can transform my life without taking any risk?   (The USA tax system as explained by JoeTaxpayer increases the risk.)  So you have a person being very logical and selling stocks that they believe will go up in value by more than any other investment they could have.   It is called risk control. (Lot of people will know the above; therefore some people will delay buying stock until Lock Up expiration day hoping the price will be lower on that day.   So the price may not go down.) That might happen if this incident leads to a deflationary demand for consumer credit instruments in the US to approaching Third World penetration levels. Ironic, as the consumer credit industry is spending gigadollars trying to spark the same consumer credit frenzy in those countries.  The demographics are already primed for turning away from consumer credit, as the Millennials are already increasingly predisposed against credit as they age.