Do you remember Sir Allen
Greenspan. Remember him often say... So, great the "RISKS ARE
TRANSFERRED"...
Yes my friends. Now you will see how the risk is
transferred...
Simple answer... It is going up, because it is going up. Ha? is that sophism or what? No this is as profound as sophism would never get and here is why: For any market to go up there must be buyers coming in and bidding up the prices. Now let us suppose at some initial start up point, for whatever reason ( security/market looked cheap, government threw lot money at it, taxes benefits were given to investors - real estate anybody - , central bankers printed too much money etc), for which I do not ultimately care, the market got going up. Once it starts going up it acquires it's own life and all the mechanisms needed to push it up start working. People tell each other how they make money in the market. Media jumps on it and reports/distorts by playing on the native greed of citizens etc.
Ok, now you have a big constituency for this thing , market be it real estate, stocks, gold etc or any combination of those.
OK, the initial investors were not stupid for whatever reason, they saw the value and started the ball rolling and now the ball/market has the life of it's own. Government, banks, financial establishments are all for it. They live off these transactions in the market and more of those more money they make. Everybody starts loving this "thing" until it blows up and then they will find few villains and punish them, but the fat cats would have made billions and a little guy is holding the beg.
Ok , great. So what are the mechanisms of this "thing"? There are many, but there is one that is extremely important for stock market. That is options. When the market starts going up the fat cats or not so fat cats start thinking of protecting their gains. AHA... INSURANCE! Yes, most of what we do in USA today is insurance. So the Wall Street writes insurance ( put options ) and becomes in love with it, cause, if the market does not go down, the insurance lapses and the "writers" make gobs of money,
ce bueno!
Ok as the market moves higher and/or does not go down, the volatility diminishes and options become even cheaper, giving more incentive the fat cats or speculators to by put options ( starting to see the circle?). As this goes on "writers" write more options and "support the market", remember these guys can use
OPM to do so "other peoples money", meaning they use your money to make money from you ( if you understand this you are genius ). Now, having created this virtues cycle, what could go wrong?...
Well, this entire process is a wealth transfer of unimaginable proportions from a little guy to fact cats. It can not go forever for social reasons or for the fear of being detected and the central bankers must at some point come in to put fear into these "writers". Writers and fat cats know that this day will come sooner or later. Being well connected they start unloading first. When/if that happens the movie seen above start rolling in reverse... The volatility increases, nobody buys stocks ( they go down)... more they go down more people fear and option premiums skyrocket and this cycle goes very fast ( much faster than what was going on on the upside). At some point everybody that could get out of the theater on fire thanks his/her God and those that got clobbered will regret their entire life they ever got into the market. Few openly operating thieves, ED
FASTOW,KEN
LEY etc go to jail and the
government introduces another law ( eventually to be thrown away , but pleasing widows and orphans ) and everything starts a new.
Thanks for being with me this far. I do not know about you but I am rewarded at this point. Now, do not forget that we have 2.5 billion new suckers ( sorry investors ) in the far east to want to know how does this movie play out. This is first time to most of them. Ce
Bueno!
That is all she wrote... No, there is one more point. In engineering this process is called the
PFL ( positive feedback loop ). Yes my friends markets are
PFL except positive is the direction it could be up or down.
Good Trading