A little Investment Humor for A Very Difficult Market
1. The US has made a new weapon that destroys people but keeps the building standing. Its called the stock market.
2. Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are? Wall Street is now being called Wal-Mart Street.
3. The difference between a pigeon and an investment banker. The pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW
4. What’s the difference between a guy who lost everything in Las Vegas and an investment banker? A tie!
5. The problem with investment bank balance sheet is that on the left side nothing’s right and on the right side nothing’s left.
6. I want to warn people from Nigeria. if you get any emails from Washington asking for money, it’s a scam. Don’t fall for it
7. What worries me most about the credit crunch, is that if one of my checks is returned stamped ‘insufficient funds’. I won’t know whether that refers to mine or the bank’s
New Stock Market Terms
CEO –Chief Embezzlement Officer.
CFO– Corporate Fraud Officer.
BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investment banker to mistake himself for a financial genius.
BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry.
VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.
P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.
BROKER — What my broker has made me.
STANDARD & POOR — Your life in a nutshell.
STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.
STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.
FINANCIAL PLANNER – A guy whose phone has been disconnected.
MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.
CASH FLOW– The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.
YAHOO – What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.
WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Past year investor who should be now locked up in a nuthouse.
PROFIT — An archaic word no longer in use
Investment Bank
Investment banks help companies and governments raise money by issuing and selling securities in the capital markets (both equity and debt), as well as providing advice on transactions such as mergers and acquisitions. Until the late 1980s, the United States and Canada maintained a separation between investment banking and commercial banks.
A majority of investment banks offer strategic advisory services for mergers, acquisitions, divestiture or other financial services for clients, such as the trading of derivatives, fixed income, foreign exchange, commodity, and equity securities.
Trading securities for cash or securities (i.e., facilitating transactions, market-making), or the promotion of securities (i.e., underwriting, research, etc.) is referred to as the “sell side.”
Dealing with the pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, and the investing public who consume the products and services of the sell-side in order to maximize their return on investment constitutes the “buy side”. Many firms have buy and sell side components.
The largest bulge-bracket firms (by market capitalization) on Wall Street include Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers. Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, and UBS AG are “universal banks” rather than bulge-bracket investment banks, since they also accept deposits (though not all of them have U.S. branches.)