Word: stockings
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...management just might look something like this. You show up for work, boot up your computer and log onto your company's Intranet to make a few trades before getting down to work. You see how your stocks did the day before and then execute a few new orders. You think your company should step up production next month, and you trade on that thought. You sell stock for the production of 20,000 units and buy stock that represents an order for 30,000 instead. All around you, as co-workers arrive at their cubicles, they too flick...
When trading stopped, the scenario behind the highest-priced stock was the one the market deemed most likely. The traders got to keep their profits and won an additional dollar for every share of "stock" they owned that turned out to be the right sales range. Result: while HP's official forecast, which was generated by a marketing manager, was off 13%, the stock market was off only 6%. In further trials, the market beat official forecasts 75% of the time...
...never would have shown up if the traders were, say, responding to a poll. A willingness to pay $70 for a particular drug showed greater confidence than a bid at $60, a spread that wouldn't show if you simply asked, Will this drug succeed? "When we start trading stock, and I try buying your stock cheaper and cheaper, it forces us to a way of agreeing that never really occurs in any other kind of conversation," says Bingham. "That is the power of the market...
Success like that has made true believers out of many. But no one contests that there are risks, and markets are hardly infallible. In the stock market, frenzied buying can lead to bubbles, and day traders make money with no concern for companies' fundamentals. But if the forward march of information technology is any indication, markets will come to play an increasingly important role. No matter the industry, companies are ultimately in the business of predicting the future: what a consumer will buy, where a product can be made most cheaply, how new laws might affect profit margins. There...
Options are in the spotlight because earlier this year the Financial Accounting Standards Board voted to require companies to treat them as an expense, making clear a cost that had been relegated to the footnotes. The tech world, which claims it needs stock options to attract good employees, has led the opposition. No lesser lights than Warren Buffett and Alan Greenspan have endorsed expensing. Here's the rub: surveys show that if options must be expensed, nearly half the companies with broad plans will cut back grants to the rank and file, while only a handful will cut equity-based...