Strong month for the markets..

[Chippiewill]

I was just looked at the one month FTSE-100 index and I've just noticed it's gone up nearly 600 points in the past month, perhaps we're past the worst of it? (Again)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/m.../one_month.stm

[Slowpoke]

The run up to Halloween is rather impressive. Call me stupid, but has the recent drop got anything to do with Greece?

[Chippiewill]

That is probably very likely since most of our economic problems recently have been dependent on the eurozone.

I hadn't thought of Halloween causing the economic prosperity, but if Halloween can do that then hopefully Christmas will be able to achieve much, much more.

[-:Undertaker:-]

Markets don't react to real good news/bad news, they react based on how they are supposed to react.

Lets say for example, Obama announces so-called 'better than expected' employment figures - markets know this is nonsense and what real employment is, but they will buy based on this good news because everybody else is. Think of Habbo when a rare was rising, even if you thought it was an awful rare and that its rise wouldn't last - you would buy simply to make a profit out of it and then sell again.

It is the same with the markets, if you want to look at our economic outlook and judge whether or not we are doing 'well' then look at government spending, private sector growth, real unemployment figures and our monetary system.

[Chippiewill]

Nice little insight, never thought to much about the markets work. BUt despite this apparently not being as good as it looks, I would assume it's at least a little good?

[-:Undertaker:-]

I suppose, mainly for stockholders but we have to remember the City of London also pays a lot of tax because of the amount of money it makes - something the European Union and France are after at the moment with their recently re-proposed 'Tobin Tax' which would lead to all these companies moving to Frankfurt or across the world because the lower tax base would have been removed.