20051209

Snow Day!

It's snowed: it's 6inches of snowed, in fact. I just spent an hour shoveling snow, which is my exercise for a week. Now too tired to do anything for the rest of the day, so will spend of the day curled up at home.

Also, 610,000 shares x 1 Yen = 1 share x 610,000 Yen, so why all the palaver?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Also, 610,000 shares x 1 Yen = 1 share x 610,000 Yen..."

Not quite: the guy was selling (i.e., shorting the market--the practice of selling shares you don't own in the hope of buying them back more cheaply, when the market falls). Quite apart from the fact that he accidentally sold more shares than exist in the company, he also agreed to sell them at way below what they are actually worth.

So, he agreed to sell each share at 1 Yen each. That is not the same as agreeing to sell 1 share at 610,000 Yen.

Or to put it another way, if I agree to sell you 610,000 Ferraris at $1 each, is that the same as agreeing to sell 1 Ferrari at $610,000?

Hugh said...

Dear anonymous,

Thanks for clearing up the confusion. I genuinely believed that there was no difference between the two transactions. However, your Italian sports car based metaphor has clarified things immensely, and I can now perceive what was impenetrable to me before.