Then bulls put in more money?
From Fleck Yesterday:
Turning, finally, to a pastime facilitated by the Fed's nonexcessive policies, I'd like to spend a minute on the subject of speculation. It's a bit like pornography -- hard to define, but unmistakable when you see it. Of course we all have our own favorite poster boys for speculation, whether that be TASR or some other wild hairball, margin-debt statistics, or the like. Today I'd like to share a great black-and-white example of frenetic speculation, which I have talked about from time to time, and that is volume statistics for the Nasdaq bulletin board. (Thanks to a reader for forwarding the following data to me.)
In 2000, the zenith year of the mania, total Nasdaq bulletin board volume was 117, 244,000,000 shares. The year 1999, no piker in the speculative department, saw 81,426, 800,000 shares traded. And in the prehistoric year of 1998, when Long Term Capital blew up and Easy Al put the afterburners to the upside, the Nasdaq bulletin board traded 31,000,000,000.
Yesterday I noted the fair amount of "vanilla" Nasdaq volume in January. Specifically, it turns out that total volume in January for the bulletin board was 57,398,657,400 -- i.e., the month of January alone comprised nearly 50% of the total for 2000, 75% of the total for 1999, and obviously nearly twice as much as all of 1998. To repeat what I have been saying for a while now, we have definitely returned, if somewhat more selectively than in 1999/2000, to the United States of speculation. |
