UNDERSTANDING PRICE TRENDS

Thursday, January 21, 2010

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In the stock markets, prices are fixed by the interaction between buyers and sellers. The price of a share at any given moment of time depends upon the relative pressures exerted by the buyers and sellers of that particular share on one another. The balance or point of equilibrium reached between these two opposing pressures is the price at which actual transactions take place. Price, thus, represents the point of agreement reached between buyers and sellers.

Price movements are caused by variations in the strength of buying and selling pressures. If the buying pressure increases, the equilibrium is upset and the share price moves up to a higher level where a new balance is struck between buyers and sellers. The price of a share at any given point thus represents only a temporary equilibrium between buying and selling pressures.

MARKET INDICES

Sunday, November 15, 2009

The purpose of a stock market index is to provide a means for measuring the overall movement of share prices in the stock market. The index helps provide market operators with a quick fix on market behavior and the likely trend in share prices. Ideally speaking, the best and most accurate way of measuring the overall price movements of the market would be to use an average based on the individual price movements of each and every share listed on the stock market. This may sound fine in theory but in practice it is physically cumbersome and time- consuming way to measure stock market behaviour. A stock market index provides a better and more practical alternative. The stock market index is an average based on the price movements of a select list of securities that are believed to represent the market as a whole. The usefulness and the value of a stock market index lies in how closely and accurately it reflects the overall and broad movement of share prices in the market

SHARE PRICES AND FACTS

Friday, November 13, 2009

Share prices are determined by investor perceptions of value. There is no such thing as the intrinsic value of a share. There is also no objective yardstick for measuring the value, or price, of a particular share. All perceptions of value are subjective in nature. They reflect what investors, in their collective judgment, perceive the value of a particular share to be at a particular time. And, what is more, there is not stability about either the individual investor's perception or the market's collective perception of value. Both are subject to frequent, and often unpredictable, changes. This is the main reason behind the high volatility observed in daily share price quotations. By and large, an investor's perception of value is determined by his expectation of how a share will perform in the future. This expectation is, turn, strongly influenced by numerous factors, some of them factual and others purely psychological, like prevailing market sentiment, current market behavior, economic and corporate news, views of widely followed analysts, dividends, bonus and rights issues, the international exchange rate of the rupee, threat of war, monsoons, rate of inflation, interest rates, fears of political instability.

In the short run there is often little connection between the success of a company's operations and the performance of its share on the stock markets. In the long run, however, there is a strong, an almost hundred percent, correlation between the performance of the company and the movement of the market price of its share. In the long run, share prices must move to reflect the strengths and weaknesses of their underlying companies. This short-term divergence between the company's operational success and the market performance of its share provides an opportunity to make money. However, this opportunity can only be exploited by investors who know that this diverseness is short-lived and will narrow down over a period of time. The key to making money on the stock market is to look for successful companies whose current share prices, because of negative or lagging investor perceptions, do not reflect the fact they are successful.