I've often tried to imagine the first man to accept a note in a transaction. I picture a grizzled farmer with a skeptical look on his face saying, "Let me get this straight. You want to take my cow and" - snaps paper a couple times - "give me this?" It had to happen. We can't live in a barter society. Finance gives consumers and business owners the ability to make things happen now. It enables capital to flow from savers to investors to entrepreneurs. Markets have incredible potential for implementing positive change. They harness human ingenuity. They connect those with money to those with moneymaking ideas. Yes, the history of Wall Street is full of fear and greed, manias and crashes, fraud and deceit, get-rich-quick schemes and get-poor-quicker speculations. There are titanic sums washing around the financial markets. So Wall Street would tend toward excess even if it were populated by saints. (And this is an industry notoriously short of halos.) Moreover, the Great Recession was a classic example of how Wall Street's complex dealings can sometimes undermine the public interest. Yet financial innovation is indispensable. It's what makes the economy - and ultimately everything else - run. It bridges the gap between the present and the future. It provides a store of wealth. And in today's world, it helps us share and manage risk. Some people say they don't see any financial innovation. But they don't recognize it for the same reason fish don't notice water. It's all around us, permeating our existence. Off the top of my head, here are just a few things that didn't exist when I was born a little over a half-century ago: - Debit cards and ATMs
- Online banks and brokerages
- Adjustable-rate mortgages
- College savings (529) plans
- IRAs and 401(k)s
- Bar codes and scanners
- Electronic bill payments
- Tax preparation software
- Exchange-traded funds and index funds
- Venture capital and private equity funds
- High-frequency trading
- Dark Pools
- Amazon
- Uber and Lyft
- Priceline, Expedia and Airbnb
- Crowdfunding
- Cryptocurrency.
And that's just to name a few. Not all financial innovation is good, of course. (Any cheers for negative amortization mortgages?) Nor have all advances been used effectively. And many financial innovations are not well appreciated. Much-derided high-frequency traders, for instance, actually improve market liquidity and reduce bid-ask spreads. Consider how all this has affected you as an investor. Your investment choices today have never been greater. Spreads have never been thinner. Fees have never been lower. Trade executions have never been faster. Monitoring your portfolio has never been easier. There's a reason Wall Street executives brag about hiring "the smartest people in the world." Finance is one of the most competitive industries on the planet. We don't often see it - or realize it - but these creative minds are grappling with huge and complex problems. The end result is that ideas get funded, projects get started, infrastructure gets built and deals get done as money flows to where it earns the highest and best returns. The ultimate beneficiary of all this activity? Take a look in the mirror. Good investing, Alex P.S. Most investors know very little - if anything at all - about one of the items I listed above: Dark Pools. And that's how Wall Street likes it. But there's a way that everyday investors like you can take advantage of these trading pools. If you want to learn more, I encourage you to join me for a live broadcast with longtime subscriber and bestselling author Bill O'Reilly today at 1 p.m. ET. The strategy we'll reveal during the big event is one I've used - quite successfully - for 20 years. Simply click here to register. | 
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