Personal Blogging, Documentary, and History…

When it comes to personal blogging, documentary is the default genre. There are plenty of blogs that serve other functions, but many blogs are primarily catalogues of the life experiences of their author. Although there are quite a few blogs that focus on collecting poetry and other forms of creative writing, the vast majority of personal blogs are in some sense documentaries.

For many years, the act of making a documentary was meant to be an objective act of reporting the sights and sounds that the filmmaker, writer, or photographer encountered. However, in contemporary times there has been a movement towards embracing the subjectivity
inherent in the documentary form. This means that modern documentaries often reflect the distinctive voice and sensibility of their creator, and the fact that todays documentaries often revolve around personality blurs the lines between documentary and memoir. Blogs
rest somewhere between these two genres, muddying the distinctions even further. Personal blogging, documentary, and memoir are now irrevocably intertwined, for better or for worse.

Although few bloggers think of themselves as making documentaries in any formal sense, every time somebody sits down in front of a computer and types up a record of their day, they are documenting their own historical moment. The things that we take for granted about our daily lives, like the way that we use specific modes of transportation, or the kinds of products that we buy, often seem quite fascinating to people who live in circumstances different from ours, and it is this kind of fascination that is at the heart of many  documentary projects. When people think about blogging, documentary is not very likely to be the first adjective that crosses their minds, but a few decades down the road it is very likely that todays blogs will be seen primarily as very subjective documentaries of our era.

The people of tomorrow will almost certainly look to the blogs of today for insight into our historical moment.

When it comes to blogging, documentary may not be the aim of most people who spend their time posting their thoughts and ideas on the internet. In some ways, the documentary aspect of blogging is more of a side effect than a primary goal. However, the fact that so many people are interested in publishing these public online diaries shows that personal blogs are about more than just rumination. The fact that bloggers are so stimulated by and interested in sharing their ideas with each other reinforces the idea that personal blogs are, in
some ways, documentaries meant for public consumption. Documentaries appeal to people who are curious about other ways of life, and many people who regularly read others personal blogs are looking for this same kind of new perspective.

Stock Market Timeline…

The stock market timeline is more extended that most people realize. The Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Germany dates back as far as the 9th century.

Back in the 13th century, merchants and financiers traded government securities and other investments. Most major European cities followed this trend, selling debt-based securities to investors to assist their own economic growth.

However it wasn’t until 1602 with the Dutch East India Company released the first stocks in a privately owned company and listed them on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange that the stock market as we know it today was formed.

Many other company owners realized that selling shares in a company was a great way to expand and grow and the stock market came alive.

It wasn’t until 1792 that a group of New York stockbrokers formally created the New York Stock Exchange board in order to formalize the rules for trading stocks. They agreed to meet daily to trade stocks and bonds.

The New York Stock Exchange expanded dramatically to include investors outside of New York in 1844 when telegraph messages, send via Morse code, were successfully transmitted, enabling investors to send and receive stock market quotes. This eventually was replaced by the stock ticker in 1867.

During 1866 the first transatlantic communications cable was completed between New York and London. This allowed the stock markets from both countries to communicate instantly, however it wasn’t until 1878 that telephones were installed on the trading floor of the New York stock exchange.

The Wall Street Journal announced in 1896 the creation of the Dow Jones industrial stock average and by 1934 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was formed in order to regulate the stocks and bonds markets. The SEC helped to oversee the requirements for companies wanting to issue stock to the public. It also oversees the daily actions of market exchanges, ensuring compliance.

The NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation) began trading in 1971, which officially became the world’s first electronic stock market. It wasn’t until 1994 that the first stock trade was placed via the Internet.

Timeline of Infamous Stock Market Crashes

With such a long and diverse history, the stock market has weathered through many periods of economic downturn and investor panic and has seen some spectacular recoveries too. When you consider that stock market declines are not as unusual or rare as many investors seem to think, it helps to restore a little faith in the ability of stock markets to recover even after the worst possible crashes.

Back in 1637, the Dutch stock market collapsed with prices falling almost 90%.

In 1720 the London stock market crashed, leading the government to take control of all National Debt.

In 1869, two American investors attempted to corner the gold market, beginning a gold-price crash and set in motion the events of the first Black Friday on Wall Street.

By 1873 America’s most reputable stock brokerage company collapsed and began a panicked stock sell off. This led to 37 banks and two major brokerage houses collapsing.

In 1884, yet another large stock brokering company collapses, which instigated another panic. This panicked sell off led to the failure of 15 other major brokering companies.

By 1893 the stock market crashed again, throwing America into a deep economic Depression.

1903 saw the ‘Rich Man’s Panic’ crash, and the financial world spiraled into yet another panic as news of the troubles hounding a major New York bank were released and 1907 saw yet another period of sharp downturn in the markets.

The notorious 1929 Black Thursday, followed only four days later by Black Monday saw the largest one-day fall in prices in the US stock market’s history at that time. One day later, Black Tuesday saw prices fall even further. Stock market prices around the world declined in response, but the bottom of the market wasn’t reached until 1932.

The Black Monday one-day percentage fall in stock market pricing was overshadowed by the stock market crash in 1987, when the Dow Jones lost 22.61% during one day.

In 2008, the Dow Jones once again saw the largest one-day pricing decline in history, falling 777 points.

Learning About The Stock Market…

If you are thinking of investing in stocks and shares learning about the stock market is essential. That’s not to say that you can’t invest without learning about the stock market but it will be a far riskier proposition. You don’t need to know every last detail about how the markets operate but knowing the basics will enable you to spot potential problems far more easily.

There are a number of different ways of learning about the stock market and you should choose one which is best suited to your own particular learning style. If for example you prefer to learn by watching you could invest in DVDs in preference to buying a book. One way which is becoming increasingly popular is to learn by attending seminars. These allow you to raise questions and get them answered by experts. Something that obviously just isn’t possible from reading books, watching DVDs or listening to audio CDs.

A number of brokerage houses put on regular training seminars for new investors. These will take you through the basics of learning the terminology of the stock market and also on to how to select stocks using various indicators. Some will even teach you how to spot trends and these can be as important for timing your exit from a position as getting into it in the first place.

Something that is very important to learn is how you feel about risk levels. This can be sometimes overlooked in the excitement of making your first investment but it can have a serious impact on your performance. If you are what is called “risk averse” you will probably be a nervous wreck if you put all your money into high risk shares. By learning to manage your risk levels you can ensure that you only select positions you will feel comfortable with over the medium to long term life of your portfolio.

Once you begin to get a good grasp of how the markets operate you can begin to make some investments of your own. However before you start to lay down your hard earned cash you might want to try paper trading. That is where you select a particular stock and decide how much you would like to invest into it but instead of placing an order with a stockbroker you simply record the transaction on paper. It’s a great way of really learning about the stock market.

What Caused The 1929 Crash Of Stock Market Prices…

The 1929 crash of stock market prices was unprecedented in modern times. Nothing had prepared investors, who had been living high on the hog throughout the Roaring Twenties, for the disaster that hit them at the end of October 1929. Crash of stock market prices can be expected from time to time as markets correct themselves following false highs but what happened that October began an economic downturn that lasted for years.

Starting on the Thursday October 24th, 1929 crash of stock market confidence became even worse on the following Monday and Tuesday. Starting with those three days of trading the market fell for a full month and began the Great Depression which took a little over 25 years for the United States to recover from. In fact it was November of 1954 before share prices reached the level they were at on that first day of the crash.

So what caused such an economic disaster? There are many different views on the cause as you would imagine but the general consensus of opinion is that there was a misplaced belief that high share prices could be sustained indefinitely. The Bull market which had lasted throughout the 1920s had even led one eminent economist, Irving Fisher, to state that “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

It seemed at the time that everyone in the nation was obsessed with the stock market and share dealing became the “in thing” to do. Ordinary men and women who knew very little of the ways that stock markets operated began to buy stock to join in this speculative boom. Many people even borrowed money to allow them to buy even greater amounts in the belief that the good times were bound to continue. They ignored all the warnings and speculation drove prices ever upwards regardless of common sense.

Naturally any boom based on speculation is doomed once people sense that the market is overheating. The market reached its peak in early September of 29 and prices began falling sharply losing 17% of their value over the next month. Even then prices rallied fueled by hope more than reason, but as smarter investors decided to take their profits the final collapse began. The result of which was the 1929 crash of stock market confidence around the world and the start of the Great Depression.

Basics Of The Stock Market…

Many new investors jump into the stock market based on hearing the hype of how it’s possible to make great money investing this way. They may have heard of a friend who made a bundle with day trading or a colleague who has a hot stock tip and so they figure they’ll jump into the market too.

Before you begin investing, it’s important that you understand at least the basics of the stock market.

While investing in stocks can help you to build a great investment portfolio, if you’re not careful about your strategies, you could also find it can be a great way to lose a lot of money too.

There are two sections to the stock market. The primary market is where shares are created by companies and generally offered to the public via an IPO (Initial Public Offering). The secondary market is where established stocks are exchanged and traded among investors without the involvement of the company issuing the stocks.

When people think about investing on the stock market, they tend to be talking about the secondary market.

Basics of Stock Market Shares

Shares, or stocks, are individual pieces of ownership of much larger companies. When companies need to raise capital, then sell off little portions of the company so that investors may become partial owners of that company. Each time you buy a stock, it represents a share of ownership in a publicly listed company. You become a shareholder. As you increase the number of stocks you have in one particular company, you increase the percentage of ownership you have.

As a shareholder, you are entitled to your share of the company’s earnings. These are usually paid as dividends, although not all companies offer dividend payments. You’re also entitled to exercise any of the voting rights that might be attached to that stock, however you don’t have a say in the daily operational running of that business.

Basics of Stock Market Pricing

There are several factors that can affect the price of stocks and you might notice that the price of stocks changes every day. While the price can be partially dictated by supply and demand, there are also other factors that can affect the overall price too. Economic changes, unemployment or bad management in the company are all individual factors that can also affect the pricing.

The price you see listed on any particular stock is based on the perceived profitability of the company and not the value of the company. This means the stock can often be priced based on what investors believe the stocks are worth. The value of the company is called the market capitalization.

When you see on the news that the market rose or fell by a number of points, it’s important to understand that not every single stock listed on the exchange followed the same movements. The index you see reported is a representation of a number of stocks and presented as a single figure to give a general idea of the market movements as a whole.

However, there will always be individual companies that move contrarily to the main market sentiment. It’s this contrary movement that day traders watch for, trying to find the next stock pick that will rise in value and gain profits for them.

Basics of Stock Market Investing

There are several types of stock market investment strategies. Day trading is growing in popularity as a way to smaller investors to begin building capital. The basis behind day trading is to buy a stock in the early part of the trading day and hopefully sell it again at a profit before trading closes.

Long term investors tend to purchase many different stocks in a diversified range of companies in various sectors to spread their risk. These investors tend to hold stocks for longer periods of time, allowing the value of their stocks to appreciate. They also receive dividend payments, either in the form of a check or as a dividend reinvestment plan, where the company issues stocks to the value of the dividend payments to the shareholder to add to his portfolio.

What Caused The 1929 Crash Of Stock Market Prices…

The 1929 crash of stock market prices was unprecedented in modern times. Nothing had prepared investors, who had been living high on the hog throughout the Roaring Twenties, for the disaster that hit them at the end of October 1929. Crash of stock market prices can be expected from time to time as markets correct themselves following false highs but what happened that October began an economic downturn that lasted for years.

Starting on the Thursday October 24th, 1929 crash of stock market confidence became even worse on the following Monday and Tuesday. Starting with those three days of trading the market fell for a full month and began the Great Depression which took a little over 25 years for the United States to recover from. In fact it was November of 1954 before share prices reached the level they were at on that first day of the crash.

So what caused such an economic disaster? There are many different views on the cause as you would imagine but the general consensus of opinion is that there was a misplaced belief that high share prices could be sustained indefinitely. The Bull market which had lasted throughout the 1920s had even led one eminent economist, Irving Fisher, to state that “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

It seemed at the time that everyone in the nation was obsessed with the stock market and share dealing became the “in thing” to do. Ordinary men and women who knew very little of the ways that stock markets operated began to buy stock to join in this speculative boom. Many people even borrowed money to allow them to buy even greater amounts in the belief that the good times were bound to continue. They ignored all the warnings and speculation drove prices ever upwards regardless of common sense.

Naturally any boom based on speculation is doomed once people sense that the market is overheating. The market reached its peak in early September of 29 and prices began falling sharply losing 17% of their value over the next month. Even then prices rallied fuelled by hope more than reason, but as smarter investors decided to take their profits the final collapse began. The result of which was the 1929 crash of stock market confidence around the world and the start of the Great Depression.

What Caused The 1929 Crash Of Stock Market Prices…

The 1929 crash of stock market prices was unprecedented in modern times. Nothing had prepared investors, who had been living high on the hog throughout the Roaring Twenties, for the disaster that hit them at the end of October 1929. Crash of stock market prices can be expected from time to time as markets correct themselves following false highs but what happened that October began an economic downturn that lasted for years.

Starting on the Thursday October 24th, 1929 crash of stock market confidence became even worse on the following Monday and Tuesday. Starting with those three days of trading the market fell for a full month and began the Great Depression which took a little over 25 years for the United States to recover from. In fact it was November of 1954 before share prices reached the level they were at on that first day of the crash.

So what caused such an economic disaster? There are many different views on the cause as you would imagine but the general consensus of opinion is that there was a misplaced belief that high share prices could be sustained indefinitely. The Bull market which had lasted throughout the 1920s had even led one eminent economist, Irving Fisher, to state that “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

It seemed at the time that everyone in the nation was obsessed with the stock market and share dealing became the “in thing” to do. Ordinary men and women who knew very little of the ways that stock markets operated began to buy stock to join in this speculative boom. Many people even borrowed money to allow them to buy even greater amounts in the belief that the good times were bound to continue. They ignored all the warnings and speculation drove prices ever upwards regardless of common sense.

Naturally any boom based on speculation is doomed once people sense that the market is overheating. The market reached its peak in early September of 29 and prices began falling sharply losing 17% of their value over the next month. Even then prices rallied fuelled by hope more than reason, but as smarter investors decided to take their profits the final collapse began. The result of which was the 1929 crash of stock market confidence around the world and the start of the Great Depression.

Increase Your Stock Market Vocabulary – Increase Profit In The New Year…

Increasing your stock market vocabulary can help to increase the profits you make in your stock market dealings. How I hear you ask. Well the simple fact is that any investor with a good stock market vocabulary is someone who has a good grasp of all the various options open to him or her in the market.

Simply by being able to understand the jargon of stock and shares you will feel more knowledgeable. And by having greater knowledge of the marketplace you, like any other investor, will have greater confidence in your investment decision making. Having increased confidence in any activity naturally leads to a better overall performance.

Let us look at an example of how an increased stock market vocabulary can help you gain that greater confidence. Say for example you didn’t understand the language of traded options do you think you would feel safe and confident investing in them? It’s not very likely that you would is it? If you couldn’t understand the difference between a put and a call you would be foolhardy if you placed your hard earned money into an investment using them.

So how can you do increase your investment vocabulary? In exactly the same way you would increase your vocabulary in any other field, by studying it. It just takes patience and commitment. You could get started by buying yourself a specialist stock market dictionary and looking up any word or phrase that you come across which doesn’t make sense to you.

Nowadays there is a new style of stock market dictionary that instead of listing words alphabetically lists entries in related groups. This makes understanding the jargon that much easier. For example if you are new to using technical analysis in your decision making process you could turn to that section to discover the meaning of any phrases you don’t recognize. And with such gems as long legged doji, “rickshaw man”, hammers and gravestones just in candlestick charts alone you could probably do with all the help you can get!

A quick word of caution here, if you decide to increase your vocabulary by reading up on different terms online make certain to cross reference your sources. That way you can ensure that the definition you find is correct.

Whichever way you choose to do it you will definitely benefit from increasing your stock market vocabulary.

History Of Advertising…

When advertising is considered from its entire history it is not surprising at all that it currently maintains such a significant factor in our lives and society. The history of advertising can be traced all the way back to the people of Babylonia and was present in several societies from that time forward. Moving forward outdoor adevertsing was implemented announce such things as properties for rent and sites where food and drink was available in places such as Rome.

It seems that we’ve all heard various tales of town criers and the travels to various villages to spread the day’s most significant news. But, these traveling announcers also delivered promotional pieces detailing the positive qualities of various products.

The products producer’s of course were behind the promotions.

Although, the property advertisements were a form a graphic advertising it wasn’t until 1472 that the first printed ad appeared in England. What was for sale? As one indicator of issues and products of importance today, the same held true in 1472 England. A prayer book was for sale.

The profitability of advertising finally captured the attention a Philidelphia entrepreneur, who started the first advertising agent for hire in the U.S. in 1841.

It wasn’t long after this that our current advertising agency systems began to take form. The agents, and later agencies, turned profit in those days primarily by buying advertising space from newspapers and then selling and creating ads to various businesses. The next step to make the advertising as recognizable, and complex, as it is today was to implement market research and the writing of copy based on the findings, which was done by an advertising agency in the late 1800’s that is still in existence today.

How Does A Stock Market Crash Occur…

There is no doubt that a bad economy can take its toll on people. While we may not be at our lowest point, most of us are feeling the effects of our struggling economy in one way or another. At least, for now, the stock market seems to be running full steam ahead. There have been times in the past when the stock market has crashed, and that leads to devastating loss on both a personal and national scale. But, how does a stock market crash occur?

Before we can answer that we need to look at the definition of what a crash is. What may surprise you is that there is no specific definition that all economists agree on. However, the general definition of a stock market crash is when there is a double digit percentage loss across the market. This loss takes place in only a few days, as opposed to the several months or years associated with the typical bear market.

Most people assume that the answer to “how does the stock market crash occur” is based on actual events. There is some truth to this, and it certainly can be a factor that leads to a crash, but there have been enough examples of bad events happening with no resultant crash, that it is clear there is something more going on.

The driving factor in most stock market crashes is panic. This panic may be caused, in part, by some event, but more often than not there is no logical basis for it. For whatever reason, a few investors get skittish, and start selling on a large portion of stock at a reduced price. Then other investors take notice, and they to start selling; thinking that there is an actual event driving this selloff at lower prices. Once this selling off that’s the mainstream investors, a crash ensues.

What we’re really looking at here, isn’t anything based on logic. Instead, it’s an economic Domino effect. Again, it’s always possible that there is some event that causes the initial selloff by the few investors, but that’s not enough to explain the overall crash. For example, let’s say there is a skirmish in a Middle Eastern country that is a large supplier of the world’s oil. A few investors get nervous about some of their holdings, and decide it’s better to sell at a loss now than to risk an even greater loss in the future. However there is no real way for them to know which way any particular stock is going to go, and yet they believe they are taking an educated risk.

Then, as other investors get wind of this mini-selloff they decide to start selling their stocks because they now perceived a real problem; even though there really isn’t one. And that’s the basic answer to how does a stock market crash occur.