Wiped from the value of these companies...

[BarcodeZebra]

I have no objection to this, currently very common piece of lazy journalese.

What I object to is that, in a rising market, we never hear of billions being smeared onto the value of certain companies.

wiped is used as the practice was to write the price of the shares on a white board type of thing before computers were really used and then when the price fell, the value was ''wiped'' off the board, and before whiteboards, blackboards and chalk were used with the same expressions hence the term ''millions wiped off the value''

I am experiencing a tumbleweed moment...

no worries barcode, some of the phrases, terms and goobledegook they use in these markets is amazing.

well in that case, shouldn't value be 'wiped on' when shares go up again? presumably they wiped the old lover value off and wrote in the new higher one?

not as evocative though...

in a bear market (a downward heading market that has lost at least 20% in a min of 2 months, (yawn!!)) when shares go down they often get rid of the previous prices completely so it is less likely others will know what has been lost. in a bull market, (upward) the previous closing price is usually kept to show what you have gained.

so therefore when prices go down, you ''wipe'' away/off the price but when going up, you ''add' to the price = millions added to the share price against millions wiped off.

but you are right, there are more headlines in a bear market than a bull market as bears signal doom and gloom, which is what a lot of newspapers exist on!!

I suppose my objection is that the term "wiped off" implies that it was all an unfortunate accident and that we should feel sorry for the companies this happens to. Whereas there is no equivalent terms that implies that the value of the stock has risen for equally spurious and undeserving reasons.

I can't explain - and probably haven't done so very well - why this niggles. It just does.

ah, I see what you mean now, and yes I agree too, these poor banks companies that do no wrong, and then they have their values destroyed for no reason in a blink of a mouse, its not fair is it, where will the next junket, beano or kneees up come from and how will it be paid for?

My wife makes the very good point that a cleaner on, say, £10k pa is not worth, in human, moral or even in terms of contribution 200 times less than the CEO on £2m pa.

I am damn sure that 200 cleaners on £10k would have done a far better job than one CEO on £2m going by what some of these banks have got up to.

I can't remeber the saying properly but its something along the lines of

even the biggest companies rely on the smallest cogs to keep its wheels of industry on track, trouble is, its these smallest cogs that are the first to go when the big cogs cock up!!