On 14 May 2002 at 13:47, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
> At 8:10 AM -0700 on 5/14/02, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>
> > How could this possibly be true? :ast I checked, GDP for the US
> > was about 10 trillion bucks a year, the combined GDP of
> > every nation on earth per year can't be more than 100 trillion,
> > most of which doesn't involve anything crosiing a border,
> > so how can there possibly be trillions of dollars worth of
> > foreign exchange a day?
>
>
> You're confusing assets with transactions.
>
> Cheers,
> RAH
>
>
I'm really not, I'm just wondering what the hell all these transactions
are. I understand that in principle I could convert 100 dollars
into Euros and back again 100 times to generate 10,000 dollars
worth of transactions, but why would I? If I'm under the delusion
that the dollar is overvalued, presumably somebody else must
be of the opposite opinion for a trade to take place, right?
So if I change my mind half an hour later, presumably it's
because the dollar went down, right? So the people who thought
the dollar was undervalued should be even more confident in their
opinion, I would think.
Yeah, I know, if the world worked that way stock price
graphs would look like smooth slowly varying curves instead
of spikey hairy monsters.
But still, trillions a day? it just seems incredible to me that
there should be that many transactions.
George
> --
> -----------------
> R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
>
