Begin To Invest Daily – Feb 17th in Stock Market History

by Begin To Invest on February 17, 2016

Quote of the Day

Once in the dear dead days beyond recall, an out-of-town visitor was being shown the wonders of the New York Financial District. When the party arrived at the battery, one of his guides indicated some handsome ships riding at anchor. He said,

“Look, those are the bankers’ and brokers’ yachts.”

“Where are the customer’s yachts?” asked the naive visitor.

-Opening to Where are the Customers’ Yachts by Fred Schwed

This Day in History

1977 – Blue Chip Stamps, with Charlie Munger as chairman and Warren Buffett as principal shareholder purchases the Buffalo Evening Newspaper – Entering Buffett into the newspaper business.

Buffett and Munger paid $35.5 million for the paper, which was their biggest purchase ever at that time. The history of Buffett and the Buffalo Evening Newspaper is an interesting one – it takes up a whole chapter in Alice Schroeder’s biography on Buffett: The Snowball

Initially, the paper was the most read local paper in Buffalo, but after a court case and managerial trouble, the newspaper began to quickly lose money, $1.4 million by November 1977. But things would slowly turn around and by 1983 the paper was making more than $19 million a year.

2000 – Total trading volume for the day on NASDAQ tops 2 billion shares for the first time, as 2,008,438,100 shares change hands and the NASDAQ Composite Index closes above 4500 for the first time, finishing the day at 4548.92.

Best February 17th in S&P 500 History:

1987 – up 2.07%

Worst February 17th in S&P 500 History:

2009 – down 4.56%

Best February 17th in Dow Jones Industrials History:

1987 – up 2.48%, or 54.14 points

Worst February 17th in Dow Jones Industrials History:

1932 – down 4.09%, or 3.51 points

Picture of the Day

I am a little behind on my reading and just getting to a week old bloomberg business week magazine. And hows that for a cover! (The article can be found here)