I learned that according to the 2007 US Census there were still 158,991 people who spoke Yiddish at home in America. Other cool ones are French Creole (629,019) and Navajo (170,717)
In the news I learned that there is a new type of Political Action Committee that doesn't have to disclose who funds them. I don't think that this should be allowed because it is always dangerous to allow people with lots of money to do things secretly and with no accountability.
Today I learned about markets. Markets are where people buy and sell things, but if you talk about markets with business people they will really only be talking about the sort of things set up in Exchanges. Exchanges are like the purest forms of markets, in that there are constant transactions. Every minute people are buying and selling, and in most transactions you'll never know who bought what you just sold or who sold what you just bought.
The thing most people talk about with markets is price. Price means what people think something is worth at a moment in time. It can vary greatly, and it is usually expressed in currency.
For the following example I will use bananas as currency.
In most markets the price isn't fixed, sometimes the market will set a range for the price. For example I'm selling a balloon, and at the start of the day balloons are valued at twenty bananas, and the market sets the limit on balloons at 5, it means that balloons can be sold for as high as 25 bananas and as little as 15. It varies from day to day and it is usually based on the cost of balloons at the end of the previous day.
How does the cost of balloons change you might ask? Apparently invisible hands have something to do with it.
But I guess invisible hands are really people offering more or less for a product based on what they think it is worth, which is usually tied to how rare the item is. A lot of people call this concept supply and demand.
Say you have a balloon, and I'm hanging out with your mom and your best friend. It happens that all three of us really want a balloon. When you walk over I say "hey, I'll give you a banana for that balloon." But your mom says "I'll give you two bananas for it." Because she wants it more than me.
This is an example of price moving up.
And that's when most people sell something.
The thing I really learned today, and that will come into play tomorrow when I move onto futures contracts, is that in every single transaction there is a buyer and a seller. Both of them have to be present, otherwise the transaction wouldn't happen.
Before today I sort of thought of Exchanges as a vending machine. I thought you just walked up to it and pressed the button and put in however much money. I assumed that the anonymous nature of the transaction meant that there was nobody on the other side.
I suppose I thought that the market bought or sold it, or something... I'm not sure I'd ever really thought about it to be honest.
Also I learned that this:
plus this:
can replace your broken headphone jack on most iPods, and it only costs $16.00 or so.
Now I will be happy at work forever.
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