I Thought The Stock Market Was For Buying Shares In Companies Not For Playing With Numbers

Maybe I am wrong, but I always thought that the stock market was a place for buying ownership of companies. To my surprise this fact seems to be lost on a lot of investors. When listening to a lot of them, or reading their comments and investing strategies on the internet, they really do give an impression a lot of them are investing on an almost daily basis. A lot of these stratgies do not seem to talk about the companies they are investing in at all. They all seem to be playing with numbers and graphs and using trends to predict the direction of the stock prices.

For me, if someone comes to me and wants to sell me their restaurant business, for example. I will want to look at the state of the business. How much income is it generating? how much expenditure does it have each month? How much asset does it have? Along with many other factors concerning the businees. After that I will look at the price being asked for the business and determine whether it is a good deal or not.

Don't know if this is the right way, but it seems a bit easier to get my head around when thinking about which stocks to buy.