Apple market capitalisation exceeds Exxon’s

For a few moments today, Apple was the most valuable company in the world. I link through BoingBoing so you can read the comments on whether this is a sign of changing times.

Distribution of stock ownership in the USA: Note that 50.9% [Owned by top 1% of population] + 39.4% [Owned by next 2% of population] = 90.3% of all stocks are owned by just 3% of the population!
Graph from: http://donklephant.com

Investment measures illustrated

I am not convinced that it is the best way to understand such things, but this site specializes in explaining investment ratios (and other financial terms) using illustrations, instead of the usual mathematical formulas.

The illustration above shows the quick ratio (also known as the acid test), a commonly-used measure of a company's ability to pay money that it owes in the short term. The quick ratio is actually defined as:

Basically, it just measures how much money you have available (the top of the ratio = assets on hand minus what you have to pay to keep the business running) divided by how much you owe (the bottom part; 'liabilities' are what the company owes. Bank overdrafts, which is how much your bank allows you to go into the hole, are excluded since they are on-going, more or less permanent ways of borrowing). It is best if the quick ratio is at least 1: you don't want to own or invest in (same thing, really) a company that has a ratio lower than 1, because it means that the company does not have enough quickly-available assets to pay its soon-due debts.

Massive Losses on NYSE/TSX: Today

Today marks the largest one day loss since the 1987 crash. Read more about the article here. Photo here. -679.95 points or 7.7 per cent for Dow Jones and -864.41 points or 9.3 per cent to 8,406.21 for TSX, only today!

Cost of crash: $2,800,000,000,000

According to this article, the recent stock market crash has had a cost of $2,800,000,000,000, or $2.8 trillion.
Picture from the inimitable Brokers With Their Hands On Their Face blog.

Brokers in despair

This blog is devoted to one thing only: Pictures of stockbrokers holding their heads in their hands.
Via: BoingBoing