One word is being deliberately omitted here and that is derivatives. All the free money that the BOJ offered to the major insitutional investors in “the float” like Buffett who bulked up on Japanese stocks with it. These in a downturn can be considered financial weapons of mass destruction which is a direct quote from Buffett. Why? Because liquidating out of these contracts will be carnage by the time everyone gets their piece and especially if the cloaked underlying asset no one really knows what it is is a loser. It serves as a legal way for the big boys to trade out inferior assets and cull their portfolios at the expense of the 401Ks innocently led to believe the “natural” market gyrations are just that and things will be back.
- Financial contracts: Derivatives are contracts between two or more parties that derive their value from the performance of an underlying entity, such as an asset, index, or interest rate. Derivatives can include swaps, futures, options, caps, floors, collars, and forwards, and can be traded on an exchange or over-the-counter. Derivatives are often leveraged instruments, which can increase their potential risks and rewards. Professional traders may use derivatives to offset risk, but they can also make less experienced investors’ portfolios riskier.
The original derivatives were crop futures, which helped farmers hedge against price fluctuations and demand. For example, a farmer might sign a contract with a middleman to sell their crop at an agreed-upon price at the end of the season. If the market price for the crop was lower, the middleman would absorb the loss, and the farmer would benefit.
- Calculus tool: In calculus, a derivative is a fundamental tool that quantifies how sensitive a function’s output is to changes in its input. For a function of a single variable at a chosen input value, the derivative is the slope of the tangent line to the function’s graph at that point.
Another take here