

Stupid Things Finance People Say  - r0h1n
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/14/stupid-things-finance-people-say.aspx

======
larsonf
_" More buyers than sellers."_

Any two-sided market will have prevailing prices at certain volumes (even if
internal to a dealer) that are not perfectly matched before the actual trade.
Say, SPY at 180.5 X 1000 bid and 181 X 1500 Offer. If that goes on a lot (1000
vs 1500, etc), market makers will adjust prices to stay as even as possible.

What finance people mean, and this is how language works, 'More buyers than
sellers [at the prevailing price]'. Good financial journalists are speaking to
a sophisticated audience that understands basic market microstructure.

------
Bill_Dimm
_" More buyers than sellers."

This is the equivalent of saying someone has more mothers than fathers.
There's one buyer and one seller for every trade. Every single one._

If John sells 1000 shares and Frank and Sam buy 500 shares each, how many
buyers and how many sellers are there? Granted, that isn't the scenario
envisioned by people that use the expression, but if you are going to write an
article full of nitpicking...

~~~
rgbrenner
Well.. John made two trades.. one to Frank, and one to Sam.. so I think the
article's right (" There's one buyer and one seller for every trade. ").

~~~
Bill_Dimm
The expression is normally used to comment on the overall market behavior for
the day (or some other time frame), not a single transaction, so the whole
"There's one buyer and one seller for every trade" thing is somewhat
irrelevant (edit: what I'm trying to say here is that John shouldn't count as
two people just because he is involved in two transactions since the statement
applies to the aggregation of all transactions over a day or other time
frame).

Also, from John's perspective it may look like a single trade (he won't know
that a computer matched his sell with multiple buyers unless they buy at
different prices).

------
evadne
I must present:

Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Banker
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROlDmux7Tk4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROlDmux7Tk4)

Also a book from Leveraged Sellout with the same title:
[http://www.amazon.com/Damn-It-Feels-Good-
Banker/dp/140130968...](http://www.amazon.com/Damn-It-Feels-Good-
Banker/dp/1401309682)

------
Daviey
Was I the only one that found this article annoying?

There /are/ some good examples there.. but generally this was an effort to
intentionally misinterpret well understood industry terminology.

------
earlyRiser13
Financial journalists and pundits, to be specific. I liked these the best:

"Markets rose slightly today, no on knows why."

"Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

------
cfontes
This [http://www.morningstar.com](http://www.morningstar.com) site is really
interesting, That alone was worth the reading.

------
kostyk
Brilliant, 90% used daily multiple times.

