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Media Madness

ByDoug Anderson Economics, Uncategorized

Following last week’s column on the stock market collapse, I undertook a simple piece of research to find out how significant the “bloodbath” was. I wanted to get a fix on just what proportion of the market participated in the drop in share values. Upskir

Seventy-seven million shares were traded on Black Monday. My initial guess was that that represented a pretty small proportion of the total shares on the market, say 2 – 5%.

I phoned up the Toronto Stock Exchange last Friday to find out the total number of shares listed. I was connected to stats.

They didn’t know – “Try listings.” It was clear that in the two weeks since Black Monday, I was the first person to ask them this question.

Listings said, “Try stats.”

I protested. It was suggested I talk to the supervisor in stats.

Eventually stats came up with the number 28.7 … More

Betting on Wall St

ByDoug Anderson Uncategorized

October is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks….The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February. Mark Twain

To put it in a few blunt words, our stock markets are giant gambling casinos which are populated by sharks prepared to fleece their unsuspecting clients – and it’s all done in pin-stripe suits on thick pile rugs in flashy high-rise office buildings.

So what happened last week? Has anything really changed? Did the price of milk go up? Did you lose your job? Maybe you have to sell your Ferrari.

Although we were regularly told that billions, even trillions of dollars had been lost. it was only a paper loss. The real value of the companies that those stocks represented didn’t change. They still had the same assets, the same cash reserves, the same staff, the same production schedules and the … More