Mark Cuban, author of Blog Maverick and owner of the Dallas Maveric

Exploring the stock trading market of the 1990’s and early 2000’s, Mark Cuban’s blog post The Stock Market gave an interesting idea into the reason why people buy stocks and stock prices act in the way they do. In the blog, Cuban argues that stock trading is nothing more than a popularity curve, where people invest in the stocks that are trending as popular and move away from those where people are removing their investments. This volatility can often boil down to how well companies market themselves, as, in the day of the Dot Com Bubble, the technology firms that had the best widespread publicity among investment banks often brought along a ton of secondary investment from the common investor. As a whole, I cannot help but side with Cuban on all frontiers, with his greatest success being his ability to correlate the stock market to human instinct.  I instantly related Cuban’s ideas about stock trading to fashion trends in high school. The popular kids always had the newest, coolest, most fashionable stuff, and, soon afterwards, the rest of the school was following in their footsteps. This leads to massive profits by the brands that produce their fashion trends. When the trend changes, the followers are left with newly purchased clothes that they can’t use out of fear of being out of date, rendering the clothes useless. This is essentially what Cuban is talking about, where investment banks, in publishing their buy rating, send a message to all amateur investors as to what

Cuban’s company Broadcast.com, whose stock, due to great marketing, went up 225% the first day of its IPO.

companies are on the rise. As a result, these investors flood the demand for a particular stock, causing the stock price to skyrocket. Cuban then goes on to explain the risk in such unwarranted stock prices. This is done by his explanation that companies, despite their sky high stock price, are not bringing in any real money, which means they cannot develop and enhance their products. This eventually leads to the company going out of business, rendering the stocks inept and costing many amateur investors their life savings. In its entirety, Cuban’s post does more than just tell the dangers of following trends in the stock market, it relates business to regular life and human instinct, causing his message to resonate on a much deeper level.

Cuban, Mark. “The Stock Market.” Web log post. Blog Maverick: The Mark Cuban Blog. Mark Cuban, 10 Jan. 2013. Web. 4 Oct. 2014.

Broadcast.com Logo. Digital image. Wikipedia: Mark Cuban. Wikipedia: The Online Encyclopedia, 5 Oct. 2014. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.

Image of Mark Cuban. Digital image. Blog Maverick: The Mark Cuban Blog. Mark Cuban, 5 Oct. 2014. Web. 5 Oct. 2014.