A Quote by Douglass North
Information costs are reduced by the existence of large numbers of buyers and sellers. Under these conditions, prices embody the same information that would require large search costs by individual buyers and sellers in the absence of an organized market.
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Most of what we know about sales comes from a world of information asymmetry, where for a very long time sellers had more information than buyers. That meant sellers could hoodwink buyers, especially if buyers did not have a lot of choices or a way to talk back.
The first principle of the market economy is that it is comprised of many small buyers and sellers, which implies a substantial degree of equity. Another fundamental market principle is that costs are internalized in the producer's price.
Today, there are also buyers and sellers of all these energy commodities, just like there are buyers and sellers of food commodities and many other commodities.
In a free market capitalist system, 'price signals' are everything. Prices are determined by buyers and sellers in the free market, and these prices are broadcast from the exchanges, reaching all corners of the economy - where they are used to transact business.
Now it's easy for someone to set up a storefront and reach the entire world in very modest ways. So these technologies that we thought would dis-intermediate traditional sellers gave more people the tools to be sellers. It also changed the balance of power between sellers and buyers.
Why should antitrust laws be used to block mergers that the market, by the existence of willing buyers and sellers, shows to be desirable?
The lower spreads mean lower costs for investors, because Nasdaq investors generally do not trade directly with one another. Instead, they usually buy and sell from market-makers, brokerage firms that flip shares between buyers and sellers and keep the spread for themselves.
Historically, large-scale global trade has served two functions: 1) the exchange of goods between willing sellers and buyers described in Econ 101 textbooks; 2) as a tool of state aggrandizement, in which the private parties are stand-ins for governmental interests.
There is such opacity within the art market. There's also an abundance of fraud and misrepresented goods, which leads to mistrust between buyers and sellers.
Sometimes entire categories of craigslist are rendered nearly unusable by spam. Con artists prowl the listings, paying sellers with fake cashier's checks and luring buyers to share their credit card numbers.
My experience is that short sellers do far better analysis than long buyers because they have to. The market is biased upward over time-as the saying goes, stocks are for the long run.
We should never lose sight of the underlying essence of a market-a place where buyers and sellers come together. Every other feature-whether crafted by tradition or technology-exists only to serve that primary purpose.
Markets are, in many settings, self-organizing and 'efficient' in terms of maximizing the welfare of both buyers and sellers.
Ultimately, the success of America's market economy depends on trust. This includes trust between buyers and sellers, between lenders and borrowers, and between investors and the companies in which they invest.
Yes, when they're buying there are more buyers in the market and that's supportive of the price. The more buyers you have, the firmer the price is going to be. When central banks were selling it was a headwind the market had to overcome. Now it's a tailwind that central banks are joining the buyers.
If you expect to be a net saver during the next 5 years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall. This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.
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