False Market

  

Categories: Trading, Investing

Is this…real? Are you real?

Whoa, whoa, whoa…let’s back up, beep beep beep. And look at markets.

False markets are markets where the prices are reflective of manipulation of information. In a perfectly free market, everyone has all information available to them, allowing both buyers and sellers to make the best decisions. In a false market though, buyers are misled, causing them to make decisions they wouldn’t make if they knew the truth. Thus, a false market.

For instance, all schemes and fraudsters are creators of fake markets, selling buyers stuff they know doesn’t work or isn’t worth the price by a longshot. In the stock market, investors may create a false market from overreacting to news…since, you know, the news likes to make a big deal out of everything. Gotta get that ad revenue to stay alive. In other cases, though, investors are misled with blatant lies.

For instance...not naming names, but…this one guy tweeted that certain companies were under investigation (totally not true at all), which sent their stock prices plummeting to the stock floor.

As more and more people are entering the investment world through the much-hyped cryptocurrency market, it’s not uncommon for false markets to be created. People hype a certain cryptocurrency, causing the price to rise, before cashing out themselves, making a run for it, then disappearing (because, well, all the lies).

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is market risk?5 Views

00:00

Finance Allah shmoop what is market risk All right There

00:08

are a lot of risks when you invest money Two

00:10

of the most common categories are unsystematic risk And yes

00:13

of course systematic risk Also known as market risk Well

00:17

unsystematic risk refers to risks linked to a specific stock

00:21

or security So you buy shares in your dad's publicly

00:24

traded ice cream company and the company goes bankrupt Who

00:27

knew pork rind ice cream would prove so unpopular Who

00:30

knew well that's unsystematic risk You made a bad investment

00:34

and you paid for it by losing everything you invested

00:38

un systematically Well that's individual stock risk or in systematic

00:42

risk AII bad brain bad return What not all investments

00:45

do well In fact many of them do poorly even

00:47

for the best of investors So most professionals diversify their

00:50

eggs such that not all of them are invested in

00:53

one stock or one basket So that revolves around unsystematic

00:57

risk That is risk You can actually do something about

01:00

and improve your odds of being successful like by being

01:03

a good smart investor But then there's market risk which

01:07

just exists as a natural part of the risk world

01:10

For illustrative purposes You could choose to not take any

01:13

road risk Like when you drive on the roads Your

01:16

odds of being hit by some idiot texting his girlfriend

01:19

and not looking at the double yellow line are not

01:21

one in a good Gillian right You also have a

01:23

risk of a tire blowout or a tree falling on

01:26

you or skidding into a mailbox on that hill with

01:28

the gravel in the oil slick from the construction people

01:32

right Those are all quote market risks unquote of driving

01:35

So why do it Why drive Why not just stay

01:38

home Never leave the house get Amazon and door dash

01:41

and ups to take care of all of your needs

01:43

and never suffer the market risk of dying on the

01:46

road Well for some people this probably is a good

01:49

idea Well the same allegory lives in the stock market

01:52

When you invest in stocks odds are extremely high that

01:56

at some period while their value will go down maybe

01:58

a lot You can't head yourself against things like terrorist

02:01

attacks and natural disasters political upheaval and zombie apocalypses or

02:06

apocalypse side They say The zombie There's no real way

02:09

to protect yourself against market risk It's just systematic It's

02:13

part of the system Got it So there's no way

02:15

to deal with market risk other than for one thing

02:18

time Historically the stock market goes up over time Check

02:23

out this glorious chart running for one hundred years in

02:25

change for what the market is done without even calculating

02:28

the additional return from dividends distributed along the way Well

02:31

you can see that there has rarely been an extended

02:33

period of time when the market didn't go up and

02:36

or at least distribute enough in dividends Such that in

02:38

each decade while there's been a nicely positive return from

02:42

being invested in the stock market could this suddenly change

02:46

and go the other direction such that we have half

02:48

a century of no growth Sure but that would be

02:51

a big departure from the way our driving has gone

02:53

in the past on the roads But you never know

02:56

There's always the N plus one idiot out there texting

02:59

and driving and you know really not giving a

Up Next

Finance: What are Market Metrics?
187 Views

What are market metrics? Market metrics are all of the figures used to determine how well a company is performing and whether an investment should...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)