Readings: Finance TV & Market Tops, Evolutionary economics, Chinese price controls
Amidst the stock market plunge in the US, Barry Ritholtz looks at a possible indicator of market tops:
The Fox Business Channel debuted on October 15, 2007. With its first quarter officially behind it, how has the market performed? On the last trading day before FBC debuted, the Dow closed at 14,093. Yesterday’s Dow close was 12,159.21 — 60 points shy of a 2,000 point whackage.
At market tops, TV ratings soar, and Publishers sell lots and lots of magazines. Bottoms occur when the public is disgusted with stocks: They certainly don’t want to hear about them on TV or read about them during their leisure hours.
In India, CNBC TV18 is certainly amongst the most popular TV channels. And there’s no dearth of new finance magazines, stock market portals (yes - that includes Moneyoga), etc. Wonder what a slow market in 2008 would do to financial media?
- Via Abnormal Returns, Scientific American: The Mind of the Market
The moral sense of fairness is hardwired into our brains and is an emotion shared by most people and primates tested for it.
The Gordon Gekko “Greed Is Good” model of business is the exception, and the Google Guys “Don’t Be Evil” model of business is the rule. If this were not the case, market capitalism would have imploded long ago.
- Yahoo Finance: Beijing wages psychological war on prices
Under the new measures, retailers of food products such as milk, pork and eggs will need to seek permission from local price bureaux, institutions that have long ago ceased to have any effective controls over produce markets.
. . . the price controls may indicate that inflation is worse than the official figures suggest. “Maybe the government has information that inflation is even higher,” he says. “They may just be buying time to handle the issue.”
Have price controls ever worked?
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