Monday, September 3, 2007

Interesting chart from The Big Picture


Barry Ritholtz wonders if foreigners have gone all in on U.S. markets.

2 comments:

neo-human said...

Mind you, if that graph is only of the 'number' of transactions (as opposed to number of 'buy' transactions or a ratio of buy vs sell), then it could also mean that a lot of foreign owners of US equities could be bailing out as well - because it does say transactions, not necessarily whether they are buy or sell transactions. Secondly, with recent volatility I know personally I've been trading the swings a lot, so perhaps its not actual 'investment' happening, but just that a lot of trading is going on. I could be wrong, but its something to think about too, and hence as with anything, perhaps should be taken with a grain of salt. Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't have as much experience as you do. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

BBL Jr said...

I linked to the chart from the popular BIG PICTURE blog by Barry Ritholts and don't know the details behind the source data. But the legend says net transactions in billions of $, so I am assuming it is the value of the transactions rather than the number of them.
One other consideration has to do with hedge fund money parked offshore. I son't know if those funds would count as foreign transactions or not but that could distort the figures somewhat too.