Robert Benchley: "Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people."

Rocketman flies over Alps with jet-pack strapped to his back

Some people go fishing on their day off. Yves Rossy likes to jump out of a small plane with a pair of jet-powered wings on his back and loop the loop above the Swiss Alps. The self-built contraption took the former fighter pilot five years to build and perfect - and yesterday he gave it its maiden flight.
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How is price determined in the stock market?

This question has bugged me for ages. I understand that on a base level, the price of a share or stock, is governed by demand and supply. The supply of a stock is for all intents and purposes, finite, so if the demand for that stock increases, the price increases. Obviously when demand decreases (or supply increases) the price should drop.

All good, perfectly understood. Now, let's assume I have 1000 shares in Yahoo. Today's share price is roughly $27. That means that I can sell my 1000 shares and I will receive $27,000 dollars for those shares. To sell those shares, there needs to be a buyer, who will pay $27,000 to buy those shares, or a number of buyers, who will all pay $27 per share, for a percentage of those 100 shares (e.g. 10 buyers each buy 100 shares).

What I would like to know is three things:

  • What happens when there isn't a buyer for my shares?
  • What happens behind the scenes when I sell my shares?
  • What is the underlying process, that allows my 1000 shares to be sold to one or more buyers at the price I agreed with my broker (or online trading account)?

I am trying to understand how the inner working of the stock market function. There needs to be two parties at the exchange, who agree a price, but what doesn't make sense then, is that my price has already been set? It is the point of exchange, which I think is the black box I don't understand.

I'd love some feedback on this. I am interesting in creating a computer model of a stock market, and I need to understand this issue before I can continue.


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Google Friend Connect

A preview of Google's Friend Connect. Google Friend Connect provides participating sites with plug-in applications to enable the exchange of messages, photographs, music, video and games. It will also allow anyone users to import their photos and friends
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How I Built a Working Online Poker Bot (And thanks for the $

Keeping the technology of poker bot building secret is like declaring that only criminals can carry handguns. So here's everything you ever wanted to know about building a poker bot, part 1.
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livelogger: It's about time Mrs Clinton admitted defeat.

livelogger: It's about time Mrs Clinton admitted defeat.
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livelogger: Heading for bed. Meeting with an old school friend tomorrow who I have not seen for years.

livelogger: Heading for bed. Meeting with an old school friend tomorrow who I have not seen for years.
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PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives | Your Digital Life, Anywhere™

Convenient Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind. Open PortableApps.com provides a truly o
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Microsoft internal memo details Windows 7-Windows Live ties

The memo outlines some of the possible ties between Windows 7 (which Microsoft has said is due in 2010) and Windows Live Wave 3 services (upgrades of Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger, Writer, Family Safety, etc., due to be rolled out late this year, if the team stays on schedule). These integration points are the potentially most fertile — and con..
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New Live Search homepage: innovations nowhere to be seen

There's more blue and green everywhere, but not many changes to functionality or usability from the end-user perspective. If this is all Microsoft could pull together after working on the new update for so long, I understand why Ballmer wanted Yahoo so badly.
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How I built my personal website in 10 easy steps

  1. Download RSS Toolkit from CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/ASPNETRSSToolkit
  2. Identify the data about me that I want to mix into one place.
  3. Make a list of the RSS feeds that are available for that data.
  4. Setup a simple Yahoo Pipe that unions all of my RSS feeds of interest into one RSS feed.
  5. Get the single RSS feed and pump it into an RSSDataSource.
  6. Bind that RssDataSource to a simple ASP.Net Repeater.
  7. Setup the RSS Toolkit Caching using the application settings suggested here.
  8. Revamp website design using templates from the Open Source Web Design templates library.
  9. Remove old administration code used for Blogger, Flickr and Youtube.
  10. Publish, and see results of Ben Powell's new website.
And, now for some code:



 1: <%@ OutputCache Duration="86400" VaryByParam="None" %>

 2: <%@ Register Assembly="RssToolkit" Namespace="RssToolkit.Web.WebControls" TagPrefix="cc1" %>

 3: <asp:Repeater ID="Repeater1" runat="server" DataSourceID="RssDataSource1">

 4:  <ItemTemplate>

 5:  <h2><%# Eval("title") %></h2>

 6:  <%# Eval("description") %>

 7:  <br />

 8:  <a href='<%# Eval("link") %>'>Link</a>

 9:  </ItemTemplate>

 10: </asp:Repeater>

 11: <cc1:RssDataSource id="RssDataSource1" runat="server" url="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=_&lt;your pipe id>&_render=rss" MaxItems="10"></cc1:RssDataSource>


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