Hi Ben, I think many commenters throw words like "rigged" around without being precise in their terminology. They conflate individual trades with "the market". Individual situations might be rigged; for instance, penny stocks are well known to be rich hunting grounds for market manipulators. But to extrapolate from an individual security to "the market" is a bit misguided, I think, especially if one is talking about a functionally global market like the S&P 500. Even trillion dollar AUM funds like BlackRock or Vanguard probably don't individually have sufficient clout to "rig" that sort of market. This calculus might well be different for smaller markets like my country's, where a couple of government funds own something like a quarter of the market capitalisation of the local bourse.

Like you, I think a lot of people are playing the wrong game. They're effectively trying to create alpha by trading (even though they may not realise it). Turns out generating consistent alpha is a hard, hard game. I tried it for a few years, I only succeeded in generating negative alpha. :) I'm perfectly happy buying beta these days.