Dear Economist,

George Soros sets aside a proportion of the profits from his financial gambles to fund educational foundations and other good works. In a humble way, I do the same. My modest five-figure portfolio of shares has performed well, and I give my adult children and the local church an occasional £500 out of the profits.

I had imagined I was doing good, but my satisfaction was recently punctured by an article in a left-wing journal which suggested that every successful mega-deal made by Soros is necessarily set off by an equivalent loss divided between a multitude of innocent little punters further down the line. In other words, he harms more people than he helps.

Is this correct? Am I also a hypocrite and a bad man?

John, Germany

Dear John,

You write as if you and Soros have been playing roulette. But financial markets are not a zero-sum game; if they work they create more winners than losers - or, more accurately, more winnings than losses.

Think of Soros’s speculations on currencies.

If they make money for him, it is because he bought low and sold high. Selling high reduces the height of peaks in a currency’s value, while buying low makes the troughs more shallow. So, while making money, Soros is also smoothing out currency fluctuations. How many central banks can boast of the same (profitable) record?

More generally, the ultimate purpose of financial markets is to direct capital to where it is most valued for spending or investment. When they work, the world is better off. It is incompetent investors who destabilise markets. Worry less about how you make the money, and more about where the vicar invests your profits.

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