Karen, that was a good article, very interesting. Michael Lewis is a pretty famous business/financial author and reporter, he wrote "Liar's Poker", which I hear is required reading on Wall Street. The eponymous game was a favorite of John Meriwether, who went on to bigger things (as if his position at Salomon wasn't a big thing) before being brought back to earth. There may well be a book in the works, "The New New Thing" showed up as a NYT magazine article first, I think.
Somewhat perversely, I got the feeling there was more hope for Lebed than his parents or the SEC guys, who all seemed completely clueless. Hanging around on a stock bboard as we are, it all cuts a little too close to home. There was one thread I used to follow where, in some strange inversion, anybody who posted any bad news or wasn't clearly shilling for the stock was considered to have dishonorable motives. And were sometimes threatened with lawsuits. Of course, SI is quite civilized compared to Yahoo, the idea of picking out one shill out of the assembled legions there is truly odd. Another quote from that story, this time quoting Lebed himself.
"People who trade stocks, trade based on what they feel will move and
they can trade for profit. Nobody makes investment decisions based on
reading financial filings. Whether a company is making millions or losing
millions, it has no impact on the price of the stock. Whether it is analysts,
brokers, advisors, Internet traders, or the companies, everybody is
manipulating the market. If it wasn't for everybody manipulating the
market, there wouldn't be a stock market at all. . . .
That is pretty much my understanding of the way things work. The professional analysts are all basically salesmen when you get right down to it, along with large portions of the rest of the securities industry. It's a funny business.
-Win |
