Investing legend Charlie Munger hasn’t softened his stance on day trading, once again comparing the practice to “an ideal gambling parlor activity.”
In an appearance at the Daily Journal Annual Meeting hosted by Yahoo Finance, the 98-year-old right-hand man of Warren Buffett said that he wishes fewer investors treated the stock market like a casino.
Munger says that if he were “dictator for a day,” he would break up what he calls the “marriage” that is investors who are looking to build long-term wealth and those who are focused on short-term gains putting their money in the same stock market.
“When I was at the Harvard Law School we seldom traded 1 million shares in a day; now we trade billions,” he told CNBC’s Becky Quick. “We don’t need a stock market that liquid.”
In his ideal world, Munger said there would be “some kind of tax” on short-term gains that would incentivize investors to hold onto their stocks for longer and reduce liquidity.
Munger said that current liquidity levels — meaning the ease with which stocks can be sold for cash — has created “wretched excess and danger for the country,” comparing the massive amounts of money moving around every day to “people getting drunk at a party” and not thinking about the “consequences.”
Munger is far from the first to liken day trading and stock picking to gambling. Experts have warned that the ease of use of trading apps make it easier for users to lose large sums of money, fast.
Stock picking — the practice of buying individual stocks in the hope that they outperform the market — can be dangerous and risky. Experts warn against trying to time the market and caution that stock picking is very difficult to pull off successfully.