Showing posts with label tulip mania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tulip mania. Show all posts

Thursday 4 August 2016

A Random Walk Down Wall Street - Part One 3: Stocks and Their Value

Chapter 2. The Madness of Crowds

The psychology of speculation is a veritable theater of the absurd. Although the castle-in-the-air theory can well explain such speculative binges, outguessing the reactions of a fickle crowd is a most dangerous game. Unsustainable prices may persist for years, but eventually they reverse themselves.

I. the Tulip-Bulb Craze

1. In the early 17th century, tulip became a popular but expensive item in Dutch gardens. Many flowers succumbed to a nonfatal virus known as mosaic. It was this mosaic that helped to trigger the wild speculation in tulip bulbs. The virus caused the tulip petals to develop contrasting colored stripes or “flames”. The Dutch valued highly these infected bulbs, called bizarres. In a short time, popular taste dictated that the more bizarre a bulb, the greater the cost of owning it.

2. Slowly, tulipmania set in. At first, bulb merchants simply tried to predict the most popular variegated style for the coming year. Then they would buy an extra large stockpile to anticipate a rise in price. Tulip bulb prices began to rise wildly. The more expensive the bulbs became, the more people viewed them as smart investments.

3. People who said the prices could not possibly go higher watched with chagrin as their friends and relatives made enormous profits. The temptation to join them was hard to resist; few Dutchmen did. In the last years of the tulip spree, which lasted approximately from 1634 to early 1637, people started to barter their personal belongings, such as land, jewels, and furniture, to obtain the bulbs that would make them even wealthier. Bulb prices reached astronomical levels.

4. The tulip bulb prices during January of 1637 increased 20 fold. But they declined more than that in February. Apparently, as happens in all speculative crazes, prices eventually got so high that some people decided they would be prudent and sell their bulbs. Soon others followed suit. Like a snowball rolling downhill, bulb deflation grew at an increasingly rapid pace, and in no time at all panic reigned.


II. The South Sea Bubble

1. The South Sea Company had been formed in 1711 to restore faith in the government’s ability to meet its obligations. The company took on a government IOU ( I owe you: debt) of almost 10 million pounds. As a reward, it was given a monopoly over all trade to the South Seas. The public believed immense riches were to be made in such trade, and regarded the stock with distinct favor.

2. In 1720, the directors decided to capitalize on their reputation by offering to fund the entire national debt, amounting to 31 million pounds. This was boldness indeed, and the public loved it. When a bill to that was introduced in Parliament, the stock promptly rose from £130 to £300. 3. On April 12, 1720, five days after the bill became law, the South Sea Company sold a new issue of stock at £300. The issue could be bought on the installment plan - £60 down and the rest in eight easy payments. Even the king could not resist; he subscribed for stock totaling £100,000. Fights broke out among other investors surging to buy. The price had to go up. It advanced to £340 within a few days. The ease the public appetite, the company announced another new issue – this one at £400. But the public was ravenous. Within a month the stock was £550, and it was still rising. Eventually, the price rose to £1,000.

4. Not even the South See was capable of handling the demands of all the fools who wanted to be parted from their money. Investors looked for the next South Sea. As the days passed, new financing proposals ranged from ingenious to absurd. Like bubbles, they popped quickly. The public, it seemed, would buy anything.

5. In the “greater fool” theory, most investors considered their actions the height of rationality as, at least for a while; they could sell their shares at a premium in the “after market”, that is, the trading market in the shares after their initial issue.

6. Realizing that the price of the shares in the market bore no relationship to the real prospects of the company, directors and officers of the South Sea sold out in the summer. The news leaked and the stock fell. Soon the price of the shares collapsed and panic reigned. Big losers in the South Sea Bubble included Isaac Newton, who exclaimed, “I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but no the madness of people.”

III. Wall street lays an egg

1. From early March 1928 through early September 1929, the market’s percentage increase equaled that of the entire period from 1923 through early 1928.

2. Price manipulation by “investment pools”: The pool manager accumulated a large block of stock through inconspicuous buying over a period of weeks. Next he tried to enlist the stock’s specialist on the exchange floor as an ally. Through “wash-sales” (buy-sell-buy-sell between manager’s allies), the manager created the impression that something big was afoot. Now, tip-sheet writers and market commentators under the control of the pool manager would tell of exciting developments in the offing. The pool manager also tried to ensure that the flow of news from the company’s management was increasingly favorable – assuming the company management was involved in the operation. The combination of tape activity and managed news would bring the public in. Once the public came in, the free-for-all started and it was time discreetly to “pull the plug”. Because the public was doing the buying, the pool did the selling. The pool manager began feeding stock into the market, first slowly and then in larger and larger blocks before the public could collect its senses. At the end of the roller-coaster ride the pool members had netted large profits and the public was left holding the suddenly deflated stock.

3. On September 3, 1929, the market averages reached a peak that was not to be surpassed for a quarter of a century. The “endless chain of prosperity” was soon to break. On Oct 24 (“Black Thursday”), the market volume reached almost 13 million shares. Prices sometimes fell $5 and $10 on each trade. Tuesday, Oct 29, 1929, was among the most catastrophic days in the history of the NYSE. More than 16.4 million shares were traded on that day. Prices fell almost perpendicularly.

4. History teaches us that very sharp increases in stock prices are seldom followed by a gradual return to relative price stability.

5. It is not hard to make money in the market. What is hard to avoid is the alluring temptation to throw your money away on short, get-rich-quick speculative binges.


A Random Walk Down Wall Street - The Get Rich Slowly but Surely Book Burton G. Malkiel
http://people.brandeis.edu/~yanzp/Study%20Notes/A%20Random%20Walk%20down%20Wall%20Street.pdf

Sunday 14 April 2013

Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Markets



The twin bubbles of today: Government bonds (which are set to burst) and gold (which is getting ready to enter the mania phase).

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Tulipomania: A tulip bulb priced an equivalent of 12 acres of good land became as worthless as an onion

17th century Holland.

Belonging to the onion family, the tulip flowers are grown from bulbs.  Propagation is very slow for it takes a season for a plant to reproduce itself. 

The 17th century Dutchmen developed a great passion for tulips and rich people showed off their tulip collection with as much pride as their rare paintings.l 

As is usual for all speculative manias, there were sound economic reasons to begin with.  Tulips are indeed beautiful flowers and were in much demand all  over Europe.  Growing tulips was indeed a very profitable industry.  However, as with all manias, the profits of the pioneers attracted more and more people into the business.  (Reminds me of the MLM model too.)  The latecomers, not willing to undergo the long period necessary for the establishment of a nursery, bidded up the price of the existing limited supply.

By the 1620s, some of the rare varieties were beginning to command astronomical prices.  Semper Augustus (a beautiful white and blue flower with red stripes) were being sold for 1,200 florins.  In perspective, this was equivalent to the cost of 10,000 pounds of cheese or 120 sheep!  At this price level, the earlier entrants to the business were making incredible profits and tales of such gains naturally pulled in even more people.  By 1634, the race among the Dutch to cultivate tulips was so great that the ordinary businesses of the country were neglected.  The same Sempler Augustus had by then reached an incredible price of 5,500 florins, an equivalent of 12 acres of good land. 

By 1636, the trade in tulips became so great that regular markets were established for them in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Harleem, Leyden, Alkmar and other towns.  For the first time, symptoms of gambling became apparent.  The stock brokers, always alert for a new speculation, switched to tulips and used every means at their disposal to cause fluctuations in  prices. 

As in all manias, confidence and prices soared to their highest just before the collapse of the market.  Everyone imagined that the passion for tulips would last forever.  Wealthy people from all over the world sent in large sums of money to Holland to invest in the boom.  Houses, land, and valuables were sold at ruinously low prices so that their owners could take part in tulip speculation. 

However, the seed of its destruction had by then been sown.  The huge increase in money supply and the sense of prosperity created by populace's holding of tulip bulbs caused the prices of everyday necessities to increase by considerable degrees.

Like all wonderful dreams or delightful parties, good things do eventually come to an end.  On a day in February 1637, about FIFTEEN years after the beginning of the mania, a speculator bought a bulb and found that he could not resell it for a higher price.  He was then forced to reduce its price to dispose of it.  This move caused a panic among all other speculators and the rush to sell became increasingly intense.  The prices fell drastically and within a short time, tulips which once commanded the price of houses became as worthless as onions.

Ref:  Stock Market Investment in Malaysia and Singapore by Neoh Soon Kean