OK. Maybe less than a week? I knew a "day trader" (he worked at my company as his day job), and he said you wanted to be out of a position by the end of the day. So he would start buying when the market opened, and would be sold out of everything by market close. Though I don't really see why we don't just tax that as ordinary income. All stock gains, all dividends. Just tally it up with any salaries, stock plans (a lot of big-wigs get paid in stock), etc, and tax it at an appropriate progressive rate.

Day traders and hedgies were where I was thinking of targeting this - all that stuff does is drive up volatility in the market. They don't buy it because they're in love with whatever the company actually does; they're in it because they think the stock is going to move in a particular direction at a particular time.

In other words all that investment activity drives up GDP, sure, but in a frictional way. The downstream effects of the money they spend are significant but the originating activity didn't result from something new or innovative. That's why I want them to return some of that back to the government in terms of a service fee, if you will.

Just hand-wavy. Details would need to be hammered out, obviously. But, unfortunately, our system assures that Congress is in the pockets of those uber-wealthy (bribes...errr..."campaign contributions"), and the wealthy wouldn't like taxes touching them. As one of them once said, "only little people pay taxes". And she was right, the wealthy have fixed the system so that is mostly true.

Very true. Ironically as I've climbed the ladder and been exposed to a fraction of how this works it's a shame how few things can be accessed by ordinary people. I don't think it started off with an intent to keep people out of these vehicles but it's certainly evolved in that direction.

It's also criminal that the annual savings rates for 401(k)s are so low - that ceiling should be going up every year more than it does.