Can someone explain recent AAMRQ stock price behavior to me?
There are things that are clearly beyond me as well. Cash per share is $12.61 but the debt looks like $30 or so per share. I look at that, and the $22 negative book value and don't see where the shareholders are able to recoup anything.
"If one takes a slightly more expansive view of the word ""saving"" to include most forms of durable asset accumulation, I think the reason some do and most don't is a matter of a few factors, I will include the three that seem obvious to me: Education Most schools in the US where I live do not offer personal finance courses, and even when they do, there is no opportunity for a student to practice good financial habits in that classroom setting. I think a simple assignment that required students to track every penny that they spend over the period of a few months would help them open their eyes to how much money is spent on trivial things that they don't need. Perhaps this would be more effective in a university setting where the students are usually away from home and therefore more responsible for the spending that occurs on their own behalf. Beyond simple education about personal finances, most people have no clue how the various financial markets work. If they understood, they would not allow inflation to eat away at their savings, but that's a separate topic from why people do not save. Culture Since much of the education above isn't happening, children get their primary financial education from their parents. This means that those who are wealthy teach their children how to be wealthy, and those who are poor pass on their habits to children who often also end up poor. Erroneous ideas about consumption vs. investment and its economic effects also causes some bad policy encouraging people to live beyond their means and use credit unwisely, but if you live in a country where the average person expects to eat out regularly and trade in their automobiles as soon as they experienced their highest rate of depreciation, it can be hard to recognize bad financial behavior for what it is. Collective savings rates reflect a lot of individuals who are emulating each other's bad behavior. Discipline Even when someone is educated about finances, they may not establish good habits of budgeting regularly, tracking spending, and setting financial goals. For me, it helps to be married to someone who has similar financial goals, because we budget monthly and any major purchases (over $100 or so) must be agreed upon at the beginning of the month (with obvious exceptions for emergencies). This eliminates any impulsive spending, which is probably 90% of the battle for me. Some people do not need to account to someone else in order to spend wisely, but everyone should find a system that works for them and helps them to maintain some financial discipline." Shorts are difficult because you have to find someone to lend the stock to you. In contrast, put options don't require that. They also have some nice properties like you're only out the contract price. The options chain for BSFT will give you an idea of where the market is.  Keep in mind that BSFT only IPO'd last year and announced blowout earnings recently. Make sure the P:E you're looking at is using recent earnings reports! "I heard today while listening to an accounting podcast that a balance sheet... can be used to determine if a company has enough money to pay its employees.  The ""money"" that you're looking at is specifically cash on the balance sheet. The cash flows document mentioned is just a more-finance-related document that explains how we ended at cash on the balance sheet.   ...even looking for a job This is critical, that i don't believe many people look at when searching for a job. Using the ratios listed below can (and many others), one can determine if the business they are applying for will be around in the next five years.   Can someone provide me a pair of examples (one good)? My favorite example of a high cash company is Nintendo. Rolling at 570 Billion USD IN CASH ALONE is astonishing. Using the ratios we can see how well they are doing.  Can someone provide me a pair of examples (one bad)? Tesla is a good example of the later on being cash poor.   Walk me though how to understand such a document? *Note: This question is highly complex and will take months of reading to fully comprehend the components that make up the financial statements. I would recommend that this question be posted completely separate." You can, in theory, have the stock price go up without any trading actually occurring. It depends on how the price is quoted. The stock price is not always quoted as the last price someone paid for it. It can also be quoted as the ask price, which is the price a seller is willing to sell at, and the price youd pay if you bought at market. If I am a seller, I can raise the asking price at any time. And if there are no other sellers, or at least none that are selling lower than me, it would look like the price is going up. Because it is, it now costs more to buy it. But no trading has actually occurred. Apple closed Friday 9/23 at $403.40.   This is what the Puts look like, note the 2013 expiration.  (The rest is hypothetical, I am not advising this.) As a fan of Apple and feeling the stock may stay flat but won't tank, I sell you the $400 put for $64.65.  In effect I am saying that I am ready willing and able to buy aapl for $400 (well, $40,000 for 100 shares) and I have enough margin in my account to do so, $20,000. If Apple keeps going up, I made my $6465 (again it's 100 shares) but no more. If it drops below $400, I only begin to lose money if it goes below $335.35.  You, the put buyer are betting it will drop by this amount (more than 15% from today) and are willing to pay the price for this Put today. "If any one thing says ""big move,"" it's that' AAPL is approaching $100 (approximately a split and dividend adjusted all-time high).  Stocks act weird around big numbers - but if you could count on just a few things in trading, it's that if AAPL moves past $100, it won't just move a couple more bucks - it will move convincingly higher." according to me it's the news about a particular stock which makes people to buy or sell it mostly thus creates a fluctuation in price . It also dependents on the major stock holder. I don't know why stocks in some industries tend to have lower prices per share than others. It doesn't really matter much. Whether a company has 1,000,0000 shares selling for $100 each, or 10,000,000 shares selling for $10 each, either way the total value is the same. Companies generally like to keep the share price relatively low so that if someone wants to buy a small amount, they can. Like if the price was $10,000 per share, than an investor with less than $10,000 to put in that one stock would be priced out of the market. If it's $10, then if someone wants $10 they can buy one share, and if someone wants $10,000 they can buy 1000 shares. As to why energy stocks are volatile, I can think of several reasons. One, in our current world, energy is highly susceptible to politics. A lot of the world's energy comes from the Middle East, which is a notoriously unstable region. Any time there's conflict there, energy supplies from the region become uncertain. Oil-producing countries may embargo countries that they don't like. A war will, at the very least, interfere with transportation and shipping, and may result in oil wells being destroyed. Etc. Two, energy is consumed when you use it, and most consumers have very limited ability to stockpile. So you're constantly buying the energy you need as you need it. So if demand goes down, it is reflected immediately. Compare this to, say, clothing. Most people expect to keep the same clothes for years, wearing them repeatedly. (Hopefully washing them now and then!) So if for some reason you decided today that you only need three red shirts instead of four, this might not have any immediate impact on your buying. It could be months before you would have bought a new red shirt anyway. There is a tendency for the market to react rather slowly to changes in demand for shirts. But with energy, if you decide you only need to burn 3 gallons of gas per week instead of 4, your consumption goes down immediately, within days. Three, really adding to number two, energy is highly perishable, especially some forms of energy. If a solar power station is capable of producing 10 megawatts but today there is only demand for 9 megawatts, you can't save the unused megawatt for some future time when demand is higher. It's gone. (You can charge a battery with it, but that's pretty limited.) You can pile up coal or store natural gas in a tank until you need it, but you can't save the output of a power plant. Note numbers two and three also apply to food, which is why food production is also very volatile.