The Author misunderstands as badly as the people he is trying to explain to, conflating wealth and market value. If you own an asset, that is your wealth, no matter what dollar price you can sell it for, just the asset itself. You can trade it, but in aggregate, the amount of money and assets in the world stay the same. That's why the only real wealth increases are in GDP, someone creating some new wealth which never existed before. Price is just an estimate about the future, how large the money stream your assets might entitle you to capture over its lifetime, and one that has constantly to be revised. Value is subjective.