BARRON'S: Barron's Mailbag: Bring Back Fractions

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chasinfla

BARRON'S: Barron's Mailbag: Bring Back Fractions

To the Editor,

U.S. stocks should go back to being quoted in fractions. One of the big reasons
why the market has been so bad since March 2000 is because that's when we went
from fractions to decimals.
No one has benefited from the move away from fractions -- not the retail investor
and certainly not the market-makers or specialists. It was a bad decision that
has negatively affected every long-term investor in the stock market.
Being in the stock business must have become pretty lousy once the feds told
you that you couldn't make money off a spread of 12.5 cents or 25 cents a share,
and that you could only make a penny a share.
Imagine how crummy it would be to be in the oil business or auto business, or
the light bulb business or the prescription drug business if a government regulatory
body told you you weren't allowed to make the kind of profits you were used to
making. Bring back fractions now!
John Alexanian
Nutley, N.J.
More...
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One of the big reasons why the market has been so bad since March 2000 is because that's when we went from fractions to decimals.
More...
wow, that guy must have really short memory... decimals since 2000. yeah right.

- jaan
 
not that it really matters, but I would prefer maybe 5 cent increments. One of the reasons ES/NQ are so much easier to trade is that there is liquidity at the price levels. That's pretty much history in stocks these days.
 
Get George on the phone and let him know what to do to straighten out this economy. The culprit is decimals in the stock market!!! :D :D :D

BSAM
 
i think decimals are/were a bad idea. I wan't in the office when they called to ask me. I would have told them to quit trying to kiss the EU's butt.

I do think that the worst possible time to go horsing around with something as fundamental as that was when they did it...but that's hindsight.

<a href="http://www.gekkota.org/html/aeluroscalabotinae.html">
<img src="http://www.gekkota.org/assets/images/AeluroscalabotesFelinus1.jpg"width=125 height = 100></img></a>
 
I almost choked on my biscotti when I read that in Barron's this weekend. I think the editor decided that there simply wasn't enough comedic content this week and decided to add it at the last minute. Its good to know that there are still idiots who read Barron's.
 
64ths, 100ths, what's the big difference?

The Nazz didn't crash because of this minor change of procedure.
It crashed because it was over-inflated, and every dot com had a market cap of 500 Mil+.
 
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