Given that Poly has granted me the ability to time travel....

[Al B. Sure!]

???

The last post in this thread was May 31.

[KrazyHorse]

Al B. Sure!
This message is hidden because Al B. Sure! is on your ignore list.

[Al B. Sure!]

Al B. Sure!
This message is hidden because Al B. Sure! is on your ignore list.

The funny thing is that's more beneficial to me than to you. Now I won't have you responding to my posts with ****ING ******!

[Krill]

****ing ******.

[MikeH]

Al B. Sure!
This message is hidden because Al B. Sure! is on your ignore list.

Repeatedly quoting that makes having someone on the ignore list pointless.

[Flubber]

Yes, the insider trading would be efficiency enhancing...

WEll if you can convince the securities regulators and the bar society that insider trading is a good thing and therefore completely legal, there may well be efficiencies LOL . Securities lawyers should be willing to "work for free" on many deals as long as they are one of the early insiders and able to cash in before the news spreads to people with sufficient capital to influence the price and "efficiently" eliminate the value of the information.


Any discussions I have seen about market efficiency references AVAILABLE information (as in available to all) driving the price. Insider trades almost by definition deals in information which is NOT available to the market as a whole. How do you convince regulators this is a good thing? What is the advantage of driving the price of a share at some point before the public announcement of a takeover bid (assuming insiders have sufficient access to capital to buy up the shares at all profitable levels) rather than in the moments after the announcement? (I grant that it is efficient in that the fact of the takeover bid gets reflected in the share price earlier but why is it good or desirable form a regulator's/government point of view)

[Kuciwalker]

Flubber: the entire point is that insider trading makes the unavailable information available. Making the information available sooner increases efficiency by reallocating capital sooner than it otherwise would have been.

[KrazyHorse]

Repeatedly quoting that makes having someone on the ignore list pointless.

How so? I don't have to see what he wrote in order to respond to him. Much better this way.

[KrazyHorse]

Any discussions I have seen about market efficiency references AVAILABLE information (as in available to all) driving the price.

Uhhhh.....NO



The WHOLE POINT OF THE MARKET is to aggregate various pieces of information together with judgment in order to represent everything as a single price.

[KrazyHorse]

How do we decide what an apple is worth? It's certainly not by getting together, assessing all of the land in the world available for apple production, all of the alternate uses to which all of that land could be put to use, everybody in the world's desire for apples, etc.

****, farmers must be insider trading against me because they don't share their entire cost structure with me before I decide to buy their apples...

[Cort Haus]

How do we decide what an apple is worth?

"Throw it out of a window and see how many people jump after it." - Steve Wozniak

[Aeson]

While I'd agree with KH's basic premise... the price of many agricultural commodities are essentially decided on by analyzing the factors he sets out in his post. Cherries for example... my Dad is on a panel (government entity) which decides the price of cherries by telling the orchards what their quotas for the year are, and how many (if any) cherries have to be left on the field to hit those price targets. They do this so that orchards can consistently overproduce cherries so that there is ample supply in poor production years, without everyone going bankrupt on good production years. Orchards don't have any flexibility in production short-term, and have very small margins on their product, so price stability is very important.

For apples, at least red delicious (and perhaps golden delicious), I'd guess the Chinese "decided" the price back in the 90's when they planted a zillion of them as a reforestation project on Loess Plateau. Though I don't know if they considered price at all when they did so. Not sure if we have/had a system for apples similar to cherries.

[KrazyHorse]

Cherries for example... my Dad is on a panel (government entity) which decides the price of cherries by telling the orchards what their quotas for the year are, and how many (if any) cherries have to be left on the field to hit those price targets. They do this so that orchards can consistently overproduce cherries so that there is ample supply in poor production years, without everyone going bankrupt on good production years. Orchards don't have any flexibility in production short-term, and have very small margins on their product, so price stability is very important.

That's not price "stability". That is price fixing, and it is welfare-destroying.

The fact that some agro producers are still allowed to use the government to engage in such blatantly antisocial behaviour is repugnant to me.

Your father's job:

[KrazyHorse]

I'm also interested in where your dad does his work.

This is reminiscent of the Canadian Wheat Board's operation, but such quota systems are AFAIK not practiced in the US

[Aeson]

That's not price "stability". That is price fixing, and it is welfare-destroying.

The fact that some agro producers are still allowed to use the government to engage in such blatantly antisocial behaviour is repugnant to me.

Yes, it's price fixing. It's geared towards price stability. Artificial or not, it does achieve that.

I've always been rather vocal about my dislike of price fixing (high or low), agricultural subsidies, and the like. I had much the same reaction you display here when I initially learned about it. I'm not so sure now. This way prices are stable (regardless if you like how they are stabilized or not) at close to the most affordable levels cherries can be produced and the business still be economically viable. I can see how the alternatives probably don't work out as well for consumers and a good share of current producers.

Your father's job:

I'd agree it would be better if this particular work there weren't necessary. But it is a rather important function given how things are set up. He's there to watch out for consumer's interests.

This is in the US. He takes a flight to Michigan one weekend a year. As for his real job, which he's mostly retired from, is consulting for various agricultural businesses around the world. He has a PhD in some sub-field of horticulture which I can't recall the name of (and no... it has nothing to do with gender ).