seperis: (Default)
[personal profile] seperis posting in [community profile] market_roulette
I worked way too much yesterday and perhaps a little this morning and so. Time for one of very few things that isn't making me grumpy. Or like, homicidal.

This is you and the stock market.

From earlier:

Stock Exchange - a company or entity that facilitates the buying and trading of securities (such as stock). It is located in a place, but it is not a place. It is a company.

Listing - companies that can sell securities on an exchange. They do not do this themselves as a rule. They get a member of the exchange to do it.

Membership - companies that do the buying and the selling. Sometimes, they cause the Great Depression. Sometimes, they don't.




Your exchange is the grocery store. Back in the day before possibly our grandparents were alive, the local store carried pretty much only local goods. Work with me on this one; while there's that entire "Buy American!" or "Buy Patriotic Country of Choice!" that goes around every so often that's supposedly based on how our ancestors were like, totally better citizens than our global asses, truth was, it was expensive to get Florida oranges in Texas, so if it made them feel better about only stocking peaches in the spirit of Texanism, whatever.

In general, the idea of global anything was the province of the very rich who could pay people to ride horses--think about that one--or get in leaky boats without GPS to go to India (China, South America, think colonialism) and start a disaster in the making we like to call the Unfortunate South Sea Company Thing. Wikipedia had a sad and dry account of what was a massive, massive disaster that was so powerful and terrible that we forgot it almost immediately and now pull this shit once a decade.

That wasn't the first. From Babylon to Rome to name a country, we've been financially crashing ourselves for all of eternity, because in the end, it's not just the money; it's the risk. We don't want to just be millionaires, though I bet we think we do; we want to beat not people, but the system itself. Dramatic payoffs have dramatic risks, and that's like the best thing ever.

As times changed and we moved on from beasts of burden to vehicles, and we figured out long distance communication in the form of the revolutionary technology known as the telegraph, we got steam engines, and suddenly, oranges were affordable. Easy access to these things was much slower, but unfortunately one of the prices of industrializing your lower classes is that they get too good for staying out on the farm but instead hang out in the city and think of new and interesting ways to not be common. In a surprising turn of events, advocating literacy and numeracy did not make them better at being subordinate. And desperation to get all those new awesome assembly lines going brought women formally as a group into the workforce (informally, we'd been busting our asses forever, but from the way history writes it, women never saw the outdoors before the mid eighteen century. Oh history).

With economic growth, with transportation, with communication, local got bigger. There were feasts of brie and California wine and I'm sure some sort of international crackers were involved, but slowly and surely, the stock exchanges, once tiny gods in their local areas, now were staring into the abyss that is known as "competition". They reacted.

Stock exchanges have rules for listing; they can be religious, secular, patriotic, insane, who knows. An exchange is a company and once, Coke thought New Coke was a good idea, GAP tried to change their logo, and the Sci-Fi Network is now called SyFy; there's no logic except the idea of money, money, and more money, and sometimes, stupidity. Some exchanges stayed local, concentrating on very local companies that didn't want to sell to those foreign (ie not in their city or state, not just country) types or ones that would have no particular interest or use for foreign investors. Others hit global like tsunamis were a way of life. No one wanted to be left behind.

Your Local Store

So for everyone who participated, I hunted down and read everything I could (in English) about your exchange, which means next time I play Jeopardy, if someone asks me about Singapore's relationship with the Bermuda stock market, I'm totally kicking ass, as long as the question doesn't require an explanation of the reasons. The number of stock markets is important; so is who they hang out with, who they are affiliated to, and the reasons why.

Most stocks do not list in multiple places; they do a primary listing and a secondary listing. There are exceptions to this, and they are legion, but they are the exception not the rule.

Many stocks do not allow foreign ownership, or restrict ownership by region. There are good and bad reasons for that, ranging from xenophobia and racism to wariness about a foreign corporation understanding the product and its impact on the community/country to protecting local businesses against conglomerates and all the reasons in between, including the complexities that can be associated with a company being owned by foreign investors and subject to the laws of more than one country. Even if you're very socially conscious and feel deeply inspired to research, it can be difficult to examine the reasoning for inclusion or exclusion of any company from an exchange, even if it's technically a company that lives in that country. There's also the above; most stocks do not multilist. There are other ways to get your stock into a market other than listing there.

Among my heavier reading, SGX (Singapore), HKEX (HongKong) and ADX/DFM (United Arab Emirates) made up a lot of it. Getting the English version of anything that is not English at conception means I'm going to miss a lot, so reading around was important.





HKEX has their site in both English and Chinese; they also have a glossary. The site is split up categorically; if you know what you're looking for, it's not too hard to find what you need. Then again, even when you know, have downloaded, and highlighting bits, you can be surprised.

List of Stock Codes was where I ended up looking for listed companies. "Equity Securities" looked right, so there I went, which is the listed companies of Hong Kong that sell stock in the exchange.

Equity Securities

I missed these:

Under GEM: Equity Securities (for more information)

Under Pilot Program Securities:
Equity Securities

Which explained why Cisco and Dell had shown up on my cross-referencing of stock codes.

Companies listed on GEM do not fulfill, for whatever reason, the listing requirements for the HKEX. A fuller explanation is here, but you could think of it as a starter list for companies; they aren't qualified to be in the main listings, but this gives them a chance to be seen and hopefully raise capital as well as their profile.

The Pilot Program explanation is here. Yes, that's eleven years old; if there's a more recent version, I can't find it in English.

Convenient link to the Shanghai and Shenzhen Exchanges for searching.

So that gives you an idea, when looking up stocks to buy, where you should look for a full listing. Look at everything. You don't have to understand what you're reading; just be familiar with your exchange's site and where everything is.



And Now

So you may wonder why, when we're not using market rules, when everyone can buy from the top exchanges or their own local exchanges, why on earth they should care if Cisco is listed in Hong Kong. You can buy anywhere! Well, mostly. So why verify this sort of thing?

China Telecom:

HKEX: HK$4.14
NYSE: USD$52.98
Buenos Aires: PhP100.90

Banco Santander Central Hispano SA:

NYSE: USD$9.68
LSE: 621.50p
Amsterdam: €7.43 (Euronext)
Mexico: PhP119.00

The exchange makes a difference. Come April, it will be vital; you will still be able to buy from any of the top markets:
1.) NYSE, any version.
2.) Euronext, any version
3.) ASX - Australian Stock Exchange
4.) LSE - London Stock Exchange
5.) TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
6.) Hong Kong Stock Exchange
7.) Shanghai Stock Exchange
8.) Toronto Stock Exchange
9.) Deutsche Börse
10.) NASDAQ
11.) Any stock listed in your local market.


But you have to verify it's not available in your home market first. If it's there but you want to buy from Singapore anyway, there will be a fee for it. But it may be worth it. That's how a lot of people got really rich on the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Challenge

First answer wins for the value of $25 (convert to your currency) added to this month. That's a lot of shares of South Sea Pearls:

China Telecom

HKEX: HK$ 4.14
NYSE: USD$52.98
Buenos Aires: PhP100.90

Does anyone know why it's this expensive at NYSE? This is findable on Yahoo Financial, all versions that I checked.

Update

New link to stock list. You may not know this, but google has a 1,000 formula limit per spreadsheet. The stock list tipped us way over that. I have a yahoo import that will also do it, but it will only work when the moon is full or on a single page I'm not using for this, so go figure. Currently, only the US stocks have prices; the rest are being added as soon as yahoo financial stops screwing with me on importing prices.

Note: Anything for Germany should be double checked. I couldn't find relaible translations for some of what I was reading. That's why it's not complete on this page and if the price seems too dramatically different, that's why.

Note 2: Japan is a work in progress. This is mostly because I didn't realize when I started that there was an English version to the Tokyo stock market and was doing this with a dictionary and a sense I was going to die. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai all benefited from me working out how to find the link enabling English or I'd seriously have my Arabic to English dictionary out and [personal profile] scy on the phone with me. She like, ran away last time I suggested it, but it's not like I don't have her phone number and address.

Dubai has no crossover I can find wtih any other market outside the Middle East. I'm still reading on them.

Note 3: Other Tickers are markets I was using as a baseline, and because Mexico and Buenos Aires were in Spanish and I can get through Spanish, and because I was familiar with their currency so I could convert it in my head quickly when checking markets.

Right. Done now. Use this as your link to the stock page.

Date: 2011-01-10 06:55 pm (UTC)
mermade: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mermade
Well, it doesn't seem to be something easy like the difference between currencies. Market fragmentation is the best answer I can come up with and that's not a very good one.

Date: 2011-01-10 08:24 pm (UTC)
roguewords: (dr who scary brain amerzi)
From: [personal profile] roguewords
I think it is the difference in Currencies. Currently 1 US$ is worth 7.771 HK$, which means to buy the same amount in US money, you have to spend more (US) money.

Date: 2011-01-11 12:09 am (UTC)
jamethiel: A common kingfisher sits on a branch with a background of green foliage. (Default)
From: [personal profile] jamethiel
This is interesting. Is it to do with monopolies? China Telecom is state-owned, but doesn't sell the Apple iPhone--China Unicorn (also state owned) is the only company that does that. There is speculation that China telecom will be the next company to be able to sell the iPhone. If you believe the chinese government's statistics, the chinese population contains the largest base of mobile phone subscribers in the world. That's a pretty big market and potentially big profits.

(source)

So essentially, rumour is the reason that the price is so high on the NYSE.

Date: 2011-01-11 10:01 pm (UTC)
jamethiel: An Australian Raven, with spirals. A painting that I owen by <user name="moonvoice"> (Raven)
From: [personal profile] jamethiel
Huh. I'm wrong! Seperis told me the answer last night.

Date: 2011-01-18 03:01 pm (UTC)
lebannen: self with hat and camera (bw hat)
From: [personal profile] lebannen
China Telecom

HKEX: HK$ 4.14
NYSE: USD$52.98
Buenos Aires: PhP100.90

They are all different [things]. CHA is the expensive one, 0728.HK is the same one trading as ZCH.x where x is various European countries, and then there's the Argentine one. As a bonus, it's also a different [thing] in Pakistan.

My comprehension of this subject does not yet reach an way of working out what and why these [things] are different. But now I know that ISINs exist, yay?

Date: 2011-01-18 10:02 pm (UTC)
jamethiel: Money! (Money)
From: [personal profile] jamethiel
:D YAY!

I will wait for [personal profile] seperis to tell you the answer. Because I'm sadistic like that.

Date: 2011-01-18 10:31 pm (UTC)
lebannen: self with hat and camera (bw hat)
From: [personal profile] lebannen
Ahahahaha. Well if this does turn out to be a step in the direction of the right answer, and someone else wants to do the finding out and explaining, they are totally welcome to all the credit for it, because I am going to go and make cake instead of looking at more pixels.

... and then possibly I will think about spending the rest of this month's money on a company that makes cake, or possibly suitable ingredients for nice cake. Hmm.

Date: 2011-01-18 11:18 pm (UTC)
jamethiel: Money! (Money)
From: [personal profile] jamethiel
*g* If it wasn't for the fact that Fosters is an evil corporation who (more importantly) produces bad beer, I would totally be investing on this strategy.

And here's a hint. Look at this page, particularly the suffix after the company names.

Date: 2011-01-21 12:36 am (UTC)
lebannen: self with hat and camera (Default)
From: [personal profile] lebannen
Hee, after you mentioned Fosters I started wondering, what else do stereotypical Australians drink....

...ooh, they do premixed dark and stormy, amazing, somewhere that's actually heard of them...
... why does this website have nothing about how this business is owned?

... oh, they're owned by Diageo, well, what about Diageo then?

Ooh! two completely different numbers?
...
and I had the wikipedia page about ADRs open before I clicked this link. Still don't understand them, but I learned of the existence of a financial instrument via an initial thought about bundy and coke. The internets really are magic.

Date: 2011-01-21 12:59 am (UTC)
jamethiel: A common kingfisher sits on a branch with a background of green foliage. (Default)
From: [personal profile] jamethiel
Well, Fosters do own the wine brand Penfolds. Which has created the Grange Hermitage, which is widely considered to be among the world's best wines.

(There isn't really anything "typical" australians drink. Unless by typical, you mean bogan, in which case it's mixers :( We have a wine glut at the moment, and wine is cheaper than beer. There is a huge difference between what people drink in the city as opposed to the country, largely based on the sheer tyranny of distance--only the bigger companies can afford to get their products out to Haye, for instance.)

If you manage to get your hands on some Coopers Sparkling Ale, that's a pretty decent Aussie beer. But they're also privately owned by the Cooper family, so I can't invest in them *g*

And the internet truly is magic.

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