Are Stocks a Sucker's Bet?

NEW YORK (TheStreet) --With corporate profits at record levels and stocks regaining the ground lost during the financial crisis, Wall Street anxiously anticipates the return of the individual investors to equity markets. It could be a long wait, because the little guy may have concluded stocks are a sucker's bet.

Investors, as opposed to traders, buy stocks in companies whose profits they expect to rise. The conventional wisdom says stock prices will follow profits up, but over the last two business cycles, that simply has not happened.

In March 2000, the S&P 500 closed above 1500 for the first time. Since then, corporate profits are up 135%, but stocks have made virtually no gain.

Buying stocks does not seem to pay any more. Most of the increased value created by higher profits has been captured by hedge funds, electronic traders, private equity funds, aggressive M&A shops, and trading desks at investment banks, all of which have multiplied over the last two decades.

Their activities, essentially, fall into two categories. Aggressive trading -- e.g., complex shorting opportunities, quickly detecting and exploiting movements in trading intentions of large mutual funds and other tactics often associated with exotic hedged bets and electronic trading. And direct asset purchases -- buying underperforming companies, all or in part, to force managers to pay out large sums, rearrange their companies through mergers and divestitures, or exploit unattended business opportunities incumbent managers have been lazy about pursuing.

Neither practice is uniformly negative to stock prices nor unfair.

Shrewdly synthesizing public information to identify value in companies ahead of other investors is the way stars like Warren Buffet became legends. Stock prices rise permanently in wake of their actions, and that's good for the ordinary investor.

Shaping up underperforming companies likely started even before the first Greek shippers bought out rivals to discharge incompetent captains, reduce seafaring risk, spread overhead and accomplish more leverage with potters, weavers, farmers and foreign merchants.

Nevertheless, too much of a good thing -- electronic trading and aggressive hedging -- can be disruptive and impose unnecessary risks. Look at the costs imposed by the May 2010 Flash Crash. And consider how often private equity and M&A shops acquire companies, load up them with debt, make big payouts to dealmakers, and then later disappoint investors and creditors.

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