Shrinkage

No its not what you think, has nothing to do with this cold weather. Haha :rofllol

The stock market (no. of shares and companies) is shrinking despite record index prices. LOL
Seems hard to believe, you would expect the opposite?

What does this all mean Blazer Bob?

"There are fewer publicly traded companies on American exchanges than at any time since at least 1990. A larger proportion of this narrower market falls into the “small-stock” category. And established companies have been aggressively pulling their shares off the market through buybacks."

"The Wilshire 5000 is the oldest index that seeks to replicate the entire U.S. market. It never had exactly 5,000 stocks (that was just a marketing-driven estimate) but it often came close. Today, it contains just over 3,600 names."

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/michael- ... 41756.html

Privately traded companies do not have to deal with do many regs. There are other avenues to raise capital available now that don't require going public. Also, I get the feeling that the larger corps are swallowing up vast amounts of competitive startups. Just a couple of guesses as to the why.

Exactly. Private companies do not have to follow Sarbanes Oxley; financial regulations that are expensive to keep. My company spent over 100K just last year on compliance.

Agree, private equity takeovers, mergers, buybacks, buyouts, expensive regs for going public. More shares to the 1%-ers less available to the public. Unintended consequences?

I think small companies (<$100M) are exempt from Sarbanes Oxley???