JF B's List: Articles Finance

• Financial speculation can involve the buying, holding, selling, and short-selling of stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, collectibles, real estate, derivatives, or any valuable financial  instrument to profit from fluctuations in its price, irrespective of its  underlying value.
• Regulating speculation

• In finance, the efficient-market  hypothesis (EMH) asserts that financial markets  are "informationally efficient". The weak version of EMH supposes that prices on  traded assets (e.g., stocks, bonds, or property) already reflect all past  publicly available information.
• The hypothesis has been attacked by critics who blame the belief in rational markets for much of the financial crisis of  2007–2010,^[1][2] with  noted financial journalist Roger Lowenstein declaring "The upside of the  current Great Recession is that it could drive a stake through the heart of the  academic nostrum known as the efficient-market hypothesis."^[
• Burton Malkiel, a  well-known proponent of the general validity of EMH, has warned that certain  emerging markets such as China are not  empirically efficient; that the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets, unlike markets in  United States, exhibit considerable serial correlation (price trends), non-random  walk, and evidence of manipulation.^[28]
• A key work on random walk was done in the late 1980s by Profs. Andrew Lo and  Craig MacKinlay; they effectively argue that a random walk does not exist, nor  ever has. Their paper took almost two years to be accepted by academia and in  2001 they published "A Non-random Walk Down Wall St." which explained the paper  in layman's terms
• At the International Organization of Securities Commissions annual conference,  held in June 2009, the hypothesis took center stage. Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator for  the Financial Times,  dismissed the hypothesis as being a useless way to examine how markets function  in reality.
• Many believe that EMH says that a security's price is a correct representation  of the value of that business, as calculated by what the business's future  returns will actually be. In other words, they believe that EMH says a stock's  price correctly predicts the underlying company's future results. Since stock  prices clearly do not reflect company future results in many cases, many people  reject EMH as clearly wrong

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• The Financial Institution has devoted substantial resources to developing and maintaining a computer platform that allows the Financial Institution to engage in sophisticated high-speed, and high-volume trades on various stock and commodities markets. Among other things, the platform is capable of quickly obtaining and processing information regarding rapid developments in these markets

• Since the end of World War II, there have only been 13 bear markets and 12 bull  markets using the standard 20% rally and decline measure.  The average bull  or bear since then has lasted 911 calendar days.  From 1900 to 1946, there  were 20 bulls and 20 bears.  From 1929 to 1934 alone, there were 9 bears  and 8 bulls, and the average bull or bear lasted just 105 calendar days
• Since volatility is currently at levels not seen since the 1930s, are we in  store for a market where 20% rallies and declines become commonplace  again?  It's definitely a possibility.  With a gain of 11% yesterday,  many are now even talking about a new bull market occurring in a matter of  days.  To hit the 20% gain threshold, the Dow needs to get back to  10,141.43, which is still a long ways away from the Dow's current level of 9,300

• 1) Scinder les grandes banques
• 2) Augmenter les réserves de capitaux
• 3) S'attaquer à la rémunération des dirigeants
• le problème n'est pas tant que les banquiers new-yorkais gagnent trop d'argent. C'est que leur contrat les encourage à prendre trop de risques.
• 4) Avoir une vraie police du risque
• 5) Recentrer la mission des banques
• Elles sont là pour veiller sur les épargnes des gens et investir dans les secteurs où il manque de capitaux, pas pour investir dans des fonds de couverture qui ne donnent pas accès au capital aux gens qui en ont besoin, dit-il. Malgré tout l'argent qu'il y a dans le milieu financier, c'est encore difficile d'avoir un prêt.

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• The Wall Street Crash of 1929,^[1][2] also known as the  Great Crash or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the most  devastating stock  market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full  extent and duration of its fallout
• Four phrases—Black Thursday, Black Friday, then Black  Monday, and Black Tuesday—are commonly used to describe this collapse  of stock values. All four are appropriate, for the crash was not a one-day  affair. The initial crash occurred on Thursday, October 24, 1929, but the  catastrophic downturn of Monday, October 28 and Tuesday, October 29 precipitated  widespread alarm and the onset of an unprecedented and long-lasting economic  depression for the United States and the world. This stock market collapse  continued for a month

• in 2008 was ranked by Forbes as  the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of approximately $62 billion
• I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money  represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these  little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could  hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of  my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch,  and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or  teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those  claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give  virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die. (Lowe  1997:165–166)
• I don't believe in dynastic wealth
• Buffett stated that he only paid 19% of his income for 2006 ($48.1 million) in  total federal taxes, while his employees paid 33% of theirs, despite making much  less money
• Buffett believes government should not be in the business of gambling, or  legalizing casinos, calling it a tax on ignorance

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• A hedge fund is an investment fund open to a limited range of  investors that is permitted by regulators to undertake a wider range of  investment and trading activities than other investment funds, and that, in  general, pays a performance fee to its investment  manager.
• Hedge funds are typically open only to a limited range of professional or  wealthy investors. This provides them with an exemption in many jurisdictions  from regulations governing short selling, derivatives, leverage, fee  structures and the liquidity of interests in the fund
• Estimates of industry size vary widely due to the lack of central statistics,  the lack of a single definition of hedge funds, and the rapid growth of the  industry. As a general indicator of scale, the industry may have managed around  $2.5 trillion at its peak in the summer of 2008.^[2] The credit crunch has caused assets  under management (AUM) to fall sharply through a combination of trading  losses and the withdrawal of assets from funds by investors

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