The stock market really doesn’t exist.

You can’t go to a physical location and see the stock market.

You can see parts of the stock market at the major exchanges – but not the Nasdaq, which is simply a vast computer network.

When investors talk about the “stock market,” what they are referring to (whether they intend to or not) is not a unified structure, but a collection of companies, individuals and many computers.

Collectively, they are what most of us think of as the stock market.

The problem with this type of thinking is that we begin to assign characteristics and actions to something that doesn’t exist.

The stock market is a collection of individuals and companies and the only thing that unites them is a desire to make money.

Marketing slogans aside, the parts of the stock market are ultimately only interested in making money – not for you, but for themselves.

Which is why the “stock market” often seems to act as if it were a single entity.

If today, the money is to be made in buying, that’s what the stock market does. Tomorrow, selling may make money.

It makes no difference to the active parts of the stock market which side of the trade they are on.

The goal each day is to be on the winning side.

Since there must be losers if there are to be winners, it makes sense that some parts of the market do very well, while others don’t.

Individual investors will find themselves among the losers if they believe they can compete with the stock market and win consistently.

Some will be successful, but most will fail if they enter the day-to-day warfare that defines the stock market.

Despite what active traders believe, you are almost always better off buying stock in good companies and sticking with it until the company falters or there is a better opportunity.

Can it be done successfully? Ask Warren Buffet, the world’s single most successful investor.