Fundamentally, all market activity is a response to the interaction of personal opinion. Somebody wants to buy, somebody wants to sell, and thereby a market is made.
Either way, the impulse represents a human judgment of how business is going, how the market is reacting to the business trend, and how, under these circumstances, this stock or that one will fare. The fascinating thing is that regardless of the situation, two essentially contradictory points of viewto buy and to sellcan always be reached.
Information can move a share price or currency dramatically, even if it is not 100% correct.
The same influence may not govern each case; the man who buys Alcoa may have become convinced that aluminum has a bright future, while the man who sells may simply be taking a profit on his holding; but the fact remains that differences can be reconciled in a trade.
The motivations of buyers and sellers are not well enough understood for any very precise theory to be constructed around them, but it seems reasonable to launch this chapter, and the two which followall of them concerned with the hard information that presumably influences investorswith some...