[Kilsimpaile]

As for not telling shareholders how would the manage that? It would still be listed under the liabilities section although probably moved under the long term liabilities.

I can count the number of financial investments I currently have on one hand. However between them, they generate a total of somewhere in the region of 200,000 pages of financial documents per year. That is not because they are all needed, it's to ensure that it is literally impossible for one individual to read and fully understand every line that they contain.

That means that the only way for you to perform a legally recognized level of due diligence in buying shares, is to do it through a broker who can hire a bunch of people to read the documents for you. Except, that broker and his agency have an inherent conflict of interest from the moment you walk through their door. The more money they can persuade you to gamble (and make no mistake, gambling is what this is, albeit with varying odds), the more they stand to profit. And as the original poster mentioned, if it all goes wrong, they have protections that you don't.

You just need to know what to look out for

Brother, I apologize for quoting this a second time, and I also apologize in advance for what I am about to say if it offends you. It's not my intention, but I want to be absolutely clear about my experience of this:

It is arrogant and naive to think that you, I, or most likely anyone that either of us know, "knows what to look out for" to any reliable degree of accuracy with regards to the stock market. I say this after having seen people who have worked in the industry for decades end up losing their homes and destroying their families simply because they thought that they "knew what to look out for" better than the other millions of investors who also lost money. It's just a giant casino, some people win, some people lose, but if you keep gambling for long enough, it will take everything you have in the end. It's best simply not to start.

I doubt I have persuaded you, so instead please just consider this: Do not invest anything that you can't afford to lose. Sounds like simple advice, I know, but it's something many people end up forgetting, and it's of crucial importance.

And hey, world domination isn't too bad.

You're right, it could be wonderful, but it depends on the motives of the person doing the dominating. In my case it was simply greed, and fortunately for the world, I didn't end up getting that far in my efforts