Subject:
index funds An index fund or index tracker is a collective investment scheme (usually a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund) that aims to replicate the movements of an index of a specific financial market, or a set of rules of ownership that are held constant, regardless of market conditions. (Wikipedia Jan 2010)
Commonsense Economics:
By John Schroy, on May 16th, 2010 |

Eventually, at some point, without an efficient market, common stocks become mere baseball cards.
Sooner or later, some Baby Boomer, pressed to pay his bills in retirement, will find that one can’t live off the dividends of common stock and that when everyone is trying to cash out their holdings at the same time, market prices plunge to levels that seemed inconceivable for generations. But it will simply be the cost of allowing an inefficient market to flourish for so long.
This article discusses the concept of inefficient markets and the practical consequences.
Fat-Finger Thursday:
By John Schroy, on May 10th, 2010 |

On May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones Stock Index, at about 2:30 PM, fell almost one thousand points, before recovering when traders discovered that there was no real news justifying the crash in prices. The day will forever be know as ‘Fat-Finger Thursday’, in remembrance of the first inclination to blame the crash on supposed mistaken data entry by some trader, somewhere. Later, the authorities came out and declared that there was no “fat finger”, but that the cause for the anomaly was unknown and under investigation.
Post Modern Security Analysis
By John Schroy, on August 16th, 2009 |

Total salaries of securities analysts working for financial institutions in 2006 amounted to only 1/100 of one percent of the value of outstanding corporate equities, domestic and foreign corporate bonds, and municipal bonds in the US market.
The exceeding complexity of modern capital markets, combined with too little being spent on investment analysis, has put the savings of millions of Americans at risk.
Popular Articles