Pop

Perhaps the fall will be faster.

In this piece, Charles Biderman explains that the value of a stock is set by marginal purchases, which do not reflect what you'd get if you sold all the company's shares at the same time. He estimates that from 2003-2007 the world's equities increased in notional value by $25 trillion, on nothing more than $1.5 trillion cash, a bit of borrowing and mostly, illusion: "Market cap and money aren't necessarily related."

When the illusion goes pop, so do all the gains. First out gets the most.

htp: zgirl