Derivatives are a zero-sum game. If someone lost a trillion dollars trading them, someone else made a trillion dollars trading them. It will always result in a net 0.
I agree that they are a zero sum game, but I’d argue that the sum is a net positive for traders over a long period of time, and the people who are systematically loosing are the workers who’s true earnings were siphoned away from them and onto the stock market, where they are sold as derivatives.
This manifests in e.g. how much cheaper it is for people to borrow money who hold a large stock portofolio, how interests in a normal savings account are usually much less than people who keep stocks, etc.
If you trade in derivatives perhaps every individual trade is a zero sum game, but taken together a whole year of trading yields benefits regardless, and that is also a zero sum game, but this time an unfair one, where you are guaranteed earnings at the cost of the workers.
The workers of the companies who’s derivatives are being traded on the stock market.
But also just workers in general. The amount of people who can not just make a living, but make them selves millionaires on the stock market is held up by the fact that workers in general are not getting the profits they generate. These profits are being siphoned to Wall Street, and used to pay for the lavish lifestyles of Wall Street traders who get to use the profits generated by the workers.
