The question of whether the market is a zero sum game is not relevant to anyone's individual market experience. I'll take a crack at tackling this question anyway, since it is interesting.
As I understand it, the market would be a zero sum game, if for every hundred dollars I gain, someone else loses a hundred. Now, if A buys AOL at $100, sells it to B at $120, who sells it to C at $140, we have A with a $20 profit, B with a $20 profit, and C with high hopes. Obviously here everyone but C has won, and C hasn't lost. That's not a zero sum game.
Applied to the market as a whole, if the market generally advances, creating larger and larger market values, then it becomes a fallacy that for every $100 made, $100 is lost. That logic only works in closed, static value systems. Given the history of the US markets, it has actually been possible for investors ON AVERAGE (that is the key mathematical concept here) to "win"--ie., come out positive. Thus, the market has simply not been a zero sum game.
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