Investors

Moral: Wherein the radio voice said this am, as I was driving to a meeting, says that the market values were up since investors were happy about the housing sales numbers. Well, who are these investors?

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We keep hearing bearish opinions about the current state of the market and expect things to go down, at some point. Jumping on the train now will mean taking a certain bath; or a rational view may say that this decline is inevitable due to the nature of the markets now.

Investors? We could look at Wiki's definition which is nice. It does not include speculators, explicitly. Why bring up speculation? Well, Minsky's insights, for one thing. One cannot seem to have investments without the gaming aspect coming to play (casino capitalism).

Well, we know that these investors aren't the little mom and pop types. So, what gives?

Also, we know that there are efforts to put constraints on some of the worse enablers, namely OTC trades. To get some idea of the froth from speculation, Gensler estimated that a "$50 tank of gasoline can support $750 to $1,000 in derivatives contracts."

Ah, is this investment?

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Well, today, the following day, the DOW bounced down then up and then down. Ah, so we have profit takers? Those are the epitome of investors?

One thing to note is that some investor types are really programs. Oh, I know, people are behind the programs, yet computation seems to take on a life of its own. Or, it will do so as time goes along; that is inevitable. And, on some days, there is a big push in volume right before the markets close.

Is that evidence of some move by program? So many questions. How can we build an economy on such gaming?

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And, we're to the pre-holiday mindset. Tech Ticker has an interesting review of how we compare to a year ago.

So much to read, including a never-ending list of blogs.

Remarks:

12/10/2009 -- More roles include the consumer and the economy.

11/27/2009 - Roubini on the coming unwinding.

Modified: 12/19/2009