I don't know anything about
the stock market, but I read the
news this morning about how stock
holders were selling off and this
is makeing thing bad.
what I don't get is that if
they are selling, doesn't that
mean that someone is buying
what they're selling?
So why doesn't it ballance out?

Most poeple buy low and sell high. If everyone i selling at once just trying to get anything they can the market is fluctuating way too much and at the end of the day the overall value of things are lower then when the poeple first started selling everything off.

ahh, i see, thanks

if you bought your stock at $200 and today someone buys it for $50 it doesn't actually balance

now is the WORST time to sell stocks. all the losses are really on paper anyway. The stockmarket has never gone down and stayed down, eventually it will come back up

A company has an initial value. If they go public and sell stock the first thing that they do is divide the value of the company into how many shares that they initially want to offer. If theyre worth 1000 (small for simplicity) and they initially offer 100 shares, then thier value is 10 bucks a share.

If I buy stock at 10 dollars a share, I'm basically investing money in that company and betting that the value willgo up. If I got 1 share and thier "value" goes up to 40 dollars a share (4000 dolars) and I sell it, I'm basically selling it back to the company for a 30 dollar a share profit. If it goes down to 8, and I dont want to lose it all, I can sell it back and only lose the 2 dollars/share. Thats buying long.

A companies "value" has long been a function of not only thier actual value, but on how many people buy thier stock and at what price. Basically its based not on how much product a company sells, but how many people are betting that they will sell product..or more shares. Its vapor mostly. Thats whats wrong with the way the world does business now, in my opinion. Governments are the same, not backed by hard goods like GOLD but by speculation that they will do well and have a good GNP.

You can also buy short but, as far as I know, thats mostly in futures (commodities), and not done a LOT in the stock market. I think they closed all stock short sells down for a while after the crash actually.

Short is a bit more complicated but basically youre buying it high and betting that the price will go down. In that case you dont sell for the cash, but for more shares at the reduced rate. Thats not EXACTLY it...but close enough.

Right now I'd invest in some mason jars to bury in your yard...or food and water. lol

Quiet is right, again,in my opinion.
If everyone sells thier shares in stocks that they own, the company has to make good and pay you. If everyone gets scared and does that, than the company goes broke paying out.

But also, if a company is not really a producer and making money, and only existing due to speculation (something the SEC is supposed to regulate and failed to do so in the case of the Bush administration) then they could not pay out anyway. They exist because people believe in them and buy stocks because the value line goes up on thier ticker. ONLY because more people bought stock.

Its a tangled web.

I dont want to put all this on the Bush administration or republicans because the root of the current failure is that the Clinton administration pushed through the Community Credit act which allowed people who could not afford to buy homes financing that they could not pay. Bush just stripped SEC regulations that allowed banks and financial institutions to trade those mortgages at face value, regardless of if the people were paying or not.

Time for a revolution I think.

Damn I talk too much!

Can I get an Amen?!

amen lol

yanno, I was just reading about Bush sending the Treasury Secretary to Congress three times since 2002 to warn them of this impending crisis and they were ignored.

For all his faults and screw ups I think this is one thing that can't be blamed on Bush

At least he has that, then.

Maybe he could've worked on the billion dollars a month or whatever we are paying for Iraq? I pick that....

Quite right again. I'm not sure that BUSH SENT him, but it's true.

The fault is on greedy fatcats and thier unfettered influence on congress and the administration in power at any given time. Like I said, it's not Bush or Republicans nor Democrats. I believe it's the way that our government has allowed money and special interests to control it. And the fact that if you are not super rich or backed by the super rich, you don't have a damn way to say anything...even with your vote.

Warren Buffet is buying.....BIG TIME....

he is often quoted as saying.....

"When others are greedy, be cautious.....and when others are cautious...be greedy!!!!"

I saw this fabulous billboard yesterday....

"I public opinion poll is not a substitute for actual thought. "

I never understood it either.

They will say things on the news like "Some guy in Kiev stubbed his toe today, and the market went down 27 points."

What does one have to do with the other? I don't know.

i will buy it from you but i will only pay $____
and not a penny more.

I agree with this 100%. It's funny that, for the first time in history, we are contracting out food and fuel for our army in a no-bid contract with the company that our esteemed VP "was" CEO of...and who still has 500,000 shares of stock options in it (KBR) that expire in 2009. Also neat for them that while gas in Iraq was/is selling for 17 cents a gallon, we paid KBR 7 dollars a gallon.

I was against the 2nd BUSH war from the start. It was common knowledge to anyone but Fox news that there was no Yellowcake sales in Africa to anyone, as Valerie Plames (the CIA Operatives husband outed by Cheney) husband, the diplomat assigned there,pointed out. Nor were there any sales of "aluminum tubes" used for the refinement of uranium into a fissionable product. People here called me un-American for that "opinion" but just chose to ignore that information that was readily available.

Funny also how every career senior officer of the DIA, CIA, NSA,, NRO and virtually every other intelligence agency was replaced then too. Instead he had junior people who did not have the seniority or balls to challenge the presidents own crazy ideas, giving him the "daily reports" and even the National Defense Estimate.

Easily, Bush is the worst president, and most obviously crooked in the history of the US. IN MY OPINION.

Even ignore the money and just consider the dead.
But ask the parents and loved ones of the 4000 killed there in Iraq how they feel and most will still say that they died for a cause. Ignorance is bliss.

Afghanistan...we should be there. Iran..watch. Bush will start it there before he's out. Even though KBR is STILL operating there even though it's against US law to do business with a "terrorist nation", as Iran is classified. They just based thier offices overseas even though they ARE an American company.

phew! I should never get started.

People got scared and sold and took the losses. Advisors advised to sell so they wouldn't look stupid and incompitent which they did anyway. The freeze on liquidity cash from banks to corporations for raw materials stopped the market cold forcing corporations to avoid banks and do intermarket borrowing. The fact that the liberal democratic congress forced the banks to give loans to poor people to get them into homes they could ill afford that created this economic travesty of epic proportions is insane. And then having same said congress vote a bailout with our tax money is hypocrisy at its finest. The reprocussions will be undeterminable. If you only knew how much the crooked money ladder went, you would be sickened. Your money is gone compliments of crooked legislators. Your jobs are gone compliments of senators who sent them overseas then writing themselves government contracts to their own companies. I just gave senator joe biden 150 bucks for a federal background check because his company owns the company exclusively that does TSA federal background checks. Why don't we talk about these special interests? Why doesn't the public know about these conflicts of interest. Oh that's right. The crooks pay a lot of money to hide these facts from the public. Obama was a lawyer for the supposed non profit group acorn. But yet he doesn't know anything about the push to give quarter million dollar homeloans to bums with ramen noodle budgets? Bullsh!t. Liars and crooks. Beurocratic theives who want to run your lives and rob you blind. 200 years ago they would be hung for treason for this. We don't need an election. We need a revolution.

I voted absentee ballot yesterday by police escort. Do you know why? Because I went to vote absentee ballot in 2004 and the circuit clerk of court started making comments about a certain political candidate trying to influence the vote. A claim was filed and she was fired accordingly. The next day out of revenge I was chosen for jury duty. I served proudly. But just to make me suffer as some sort of punishment they called me in from work 3 times to serve (which is a 100 mile drive from work to the court house) just to tell me as I walked through the door that the case had been settled. Like they have never heard of a f*cking great invention called the telephone like the one on your desk you dumb ass clerk of court twat. So I had a nice absentee vote with a police escort not out of conscious decision, but out of vengeance.

Someone with my thoughts. But if we repeat that "R" word (the last one in your post and mine) 3 times, the FBI shows up!