Category: capitalism

Why do stocks go up and down?

Why do stocks go up and down?

I was motivated to major in Economics because I wanted to understand human behavior and how the world works. Especially things that don’t make any sense. It’s hard to find a better example than the stock market. There are hundreds of publications and TV networks and commentators that try to make sense of something that really seems to makes no sense.

But it actually does make sense. It’s just a kind of sense that’s difficult to accept especially if you’ve invested your retirement into the market.

Let’s start with things that are often cited as reasons for stocks going up or down:

  • Company earnings
  • News stories
  • P/E ratio or other numerics
  • New product introduction
  • Layoffs

I could go on. But none of these directly causes a stock to go up or down. It’s easy to prove this by picking a company and looking at historical price moves based on one of the items above.… READ THE REST

Steal this idea

Steal this idea

About 10 years ago or so, I thought of creating a website called Steal This Idea, inspired by the classic book by Abbie Hoffman called Steal This Book. Not being a web designer and lacking time, the idea never became reality.

The basic concept was very simple: the world is full of people with great ideas, but few become reality, but rarely because the person with the idea doesn’t want it to be, but because they lack the resources or know-how or even time to make it real. Ironically, this is reason my site never became a reality!

  • People could post their ideas for products (intangible or otherwise) that they would like to become reality
  • Others that have resources or time, but lack ideas, could use the site to mine for good ideas
  • Hopefully, in the spirit of cooperation, should the idea become reality and bring financial or other success to the implementer, it could be shared with the person that came up with the idea

Basically the crux of the idea is that it’s better to have a great idea become reality and not profit from it than to have it forgotten forever.… READ THE REST