rockyracoon wrote:

All shares that have been issued are owned by someone. There is not a pile of unbought and unloved shares sitting on the shelf waiting to be bought.

All shares are owned by somone .... and there's always someone who'll buy shares at a lower and lower price and it's never the case that shares in some company might keep being sold without being bought ?? Must there be someone who wants to buy shares before you can sell them? Surely if a company ends up with a bear run then it'll have shares unsold at some stage?

The shares will still be owned, but nobody will want to buy them. i.e. the owners can't sell them.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

The shares will still be owned, but nobody will want to buy them. i.e. the owners can't sell them.

Ah yes that's the bottom... does that happen often I wonder? What happens then - nothing?

Nikkei down 150 points

Auditor #9 wrote:

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

The shares will still be owned, but nobody will want to buy them. i.e. the owners can't sell them.

Ah yes that's the bottom... does that happen often I wonder? What happens then - nothing?

Nikkei down 150 points

The December futures contract has the Nikkei marked down for a 500 point drop. Let's see if it happens.

It is nearly impossible to predict the bottom of the price cycle for any stock, commodity or index. Many have tried and many have failed. If someone actually picks a stock at the final bottom price, it is akin to the odds of winning the lottery. Most investors buy or sell for the long term. They base their buy signals on the fundamentals of the company's shares they are purchasing. Does the company have earnings potential, low gearing, etc. Can you with any degree of certainty tell if Irish Bank balance sheets are healthy? Do these institutions have some competitive advantage in the market? These are the very basic questions one usually answers before investing.

While price is important, it is not the only factor which one should consider. Many investors look for several new highs to be made before they invest in a stock. Their reasoning is that they want to see waves of new investors enter into the market for the stock to make sure there's future action. It's not inconceivable for a stock's price to languish for considerable periods. Where exactly are BOI's and AIB's potential earnings coming from in the future?

That Nikkei graph is from yesterday - Japan is about to open again in a short while. Do those futures specify a specific month or time period when that 500 point drop will be?

The ISEQ opened up 160 points probably on the strength of some people thinking they could take advantage of the confidence trick but is now up 99 and falling. At least we're rich in wind (for today) - we could see two record graphs today ...

Horizontal would be a good calm day. We need a few months of that sort of weather.

The ISE.ie site is almost unreachable. I think it's getting hammered.

ISE.ie has been bad for the last few days. Best going through Yahoo to get updates on the market. It is up around 85 so far but it was up over 100 about an hour ago so it is back declining from that again.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^ISEQ

It sort of looks like a tv heartbeat after defibrillation. Are those bank shares up a bit?


http://www.finfacts.com/Private/curency/iseqindex.htm

Think I might jet off to South Africa with all this turmoil. Got an offer to go there for 10 days on the 27th October - 6th November. Should I take it. Would be one week after I finish my exams... which start tomorrow .

johnfás wrote:

Think I might jet off to South Africa with all this turmoil. Got an offer to go there for 10 days on the 27th October - 6th November. Should I take it. Would be one week after I finish my exams... which start tomorrow .

Slim Buddha wrote:

I think I was one of the luckiest tourists in Dublin this summer. I got a whole weekend of "no rain". From Friday to Monday. I had a great weekend.

Friday: Had a fascinating conversation in my local with the young Chinese lounge boy. He was well informed on the Shanghai property boom and if 6 years in Ireland has taught him anything, it was the need for proper infrastructure planning.

Saturday: Morning....shopping, shopping shopping. Shirts, ties, overcoat, belts, cufflinks, shoes. Every receipt accompanied with taxback receipt.

Evening. Dinner with girlfriend in Chapter One. Hype well deserved. Food excellent, Service excellent, Ambience excellent. She was impressed.

Sunday. Nice drive out by Donabate & Portrane early in the morning followed by lunch with the sister and mother. Evening brought a session in the Diggers, the only pub on the planet apart from Mulligans where I drink Guinness.

Monday. Dublin Airport. Head straight for the tax back facility. €122.35! Nice. "Credit or Cash?" Cash is king in this economy now and it finances all my duty free purchases.

Best weekend in a long time in Dublin. And the city is looking better than it has for some time (excluding, of course, Dublin Airport, which remains a national embarrassment.)

Buddies can ye spare a dime?
(hang on, iseq back up to Plus 70 points )

My parents are heading off for 3 weeks to an insolvency conference (very appropriate really!) and I have a longstanding invitation to join them. However, I did have so many nice ideas for my 3 weeks of a "free gaff". That said, I'm increasingly depressed with Dublin and might like to just get away for a while. If i went I'd skip the conference and I have to come home earlier because I have to attend my own graduation for my PGDip from DIT on the 8th! Would be poor show to be one of those in abstentia crew.

I'd go to the conference and would skip the graduation. There is no room for sentimental actions these days. Who is organizing the conference?

Organised by my dad's firm (Chartered Accountant). Meeting of the insolvency type people in all their firms to discuss international development of insolvency issues blah blah blah. I don't think they'd be too pushed to pay for my accommodation in the hotel for the conference and I wouldn't be allowed to be a delegate anyway! Would have to troop around with the mother on the partner's excursions.

johnfás wrote:

Think I might jet off to South Africa with all this turmoil. Got an offer to go there for 10 days on the 27th October - 6th November. Should I take it. Would be one week after I finish my exams... which start tomorrow .

GO

Is there any reason to stay?

In that case - 10 days on the beach and back for the piss up sounds great.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

In that case - 10 days on the beach and back for the piss up sounds great.

Yeh, and put up a webcam on the beach so we can all have a look.

Beach, beach, beach .. that word sounds familiar...

ISEQ up 140 points and futures markets rallying all over the globe. The Tickerman predicted the markets would rally at the bailout - was there a war going on yesterday on the stock market when the Dow shed it's biggest swathe of value EVER? We'll never know until Oliver Stone makes the film "Hank and the Bank" in 2015.

Up 146 - is that the bottom reached now? Time to throw in the few grand, family jewels, car?

Didn't know you could buy stocks with a car! I can just imagine thousands of people turning up to Davy Stockbrokers on Dawson Street throwing their cars at them shouting 'BUY, BUY, BUY!'

I don't think that this has played out yet. What is the hurry?

Dere's a few bulls wandering around the various exchanges picking up what they believe to be some bargains. I don't have any volume info (which is very important) but looking at price action on a couple of spread-betting sites I get the feeling that action is pretty thin on the ground.

I kinda half believed that the markets wouldn't go into meltdown as predicted by some. The uncertainty factor is greatly diminished for the very short term. We know Congress hasn't passed the bill and there is a fair chance that even if a bail-out bill is passed that it will be so wishy-washy as not have an immediate impact on the markets. Banks will not be lending to any great extent until they know and can verifty that the derivatives markets are fixed and that much of the toxic shite laying on all their balance sheets is eventually filtered through the system. In the meantime, many Western banks have to recaptalise their operations and begin to look for profitable lending opportunities. In the normal course of events, we're talking about a process that will take years.

Imo, there is a silver lining to both the overall storm and in the rejection of the bail-out bill. Both the storm and the bill are making it patently clear that there is no quick fix measure(s). My biggest fear all along was that the Fed would somehow re-inflate the money markets without addressing the underlying problems. My guess is that the Yanks will get it wrong in the long term but that doesn't mean that Europe has to follow their lead. In fact, I'm betting that Europe will learn more from this experience than the US.

The yahoo link is a bit tricky to paste here but it shows the volumes in the "technical charts" button on the left. I've screen scraped it below - can you read it? And are you suspecting there may be a few lone bulls out there putting a good gloss on it? Could they imitate high volumes some way? Hardly ..


http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=^ISEQ&t=1d&l=on&z=m&q=l&p=p,s,v&a=&c=

All this takes is for something/someone to flick the momentum switch slightly in favour of confidence. A mood change is as good as 700billion dollars at this point. A couple of big bulls could turn this on it's head ?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

All this takes is for something/someone to flick the momentum switch slightly in favour of confidence. A mood change is as good as 700billion dollars at this point. A couple of big bulls could turn this on it's head ?

True but there is a lot to learn from a herd of Wildebeest. The dominant animals don't head up the herd.

That bail out package is enough to make any sane person leave Ireland. It is a meaningless guarantee if called.