Stock Market Crash

Stock Market Crash A stock market crash is a sudden decline of stock prices in stock markets. It usually happens due to panic among stockholders and various economic factors. These crashes usually occur after a long period of rising stock prices (due to going speculations), when P/E ratios are far above their averages. According to Benjamin Graham, the father of securities analysis, there are three main forces behind the market crash: the manipulation of stocks, the lending of money to buy stocks and excessive optimism. The most famous market crash, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday, happened on October, 29 1929. It is regarded as a start of the Great Depression. All of the three forces mentioned above contributed to this crash. American economy was blooming in the 1920s. NYSE was the largest stock market in the world. From 1920 till 1929 many stocks quadrupled in value. Thus, many people invested their money in stocks, expecting to gain profit. It led to speculative boom that took place in late twenties: the rising share prices were encouraging people to invest even more. Many of the investors had to borrow money to buy stocks but they only had to have 10% equity and 90% margin to buy securities. Speculations on stocks stimulated further price rises and created an economic bubble. The P/E ratios in 1929 were far

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: Business Studies
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Explain the main features of the behaviour of firms which operate in an oligopolistic market (10)

Explain the main features of the behaviour of firms which operate in an oligopolistic market (10) An oligopolistic market is one which has several main firms that dominate the market and the labour supply is concentrated around them. All firms are interdependent and the actions of one firm will directly affect another, all products are differentiated but there are close substitutes to them. Within the market there are high barriers to entry and exit and collusion may occur. A firms behaviour in an oligoplistic market is much dependant on that of the other firms. As there is no competition on price they must compete on other aspects of the marketing mix such as place and promotions, this means that firms will have to invest into Research and Development in order to improve their product and make it seem more attractive to consumers. In an oligoplistic market there are no diseconomies of scale due to the L shaped average cost curve as firms cannot compensate for them because of the kinked demand curve. Firms have to behave in this way as there is no room for price reductions as soon as one firm puts its prices down the other firms will lower their prices and this can lead to a price war. The kinked demand curve model assumes that a business might face a dual demand curve for its product based on the likely reactions of other firms in the market to a change in its price or

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: Business Studies
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Outline and evaluate research into obedience (12)

Outline and evaluate research into obedience (12) In Milgram's original obedience to authority study, his aims were to set up a situation in which single individuals were ordered to act against a stranger in an inhumane way and to see at what point they would refuse to obey the order. Milgram advertised for male volunteers by placing an advert in a local paper, which offered $4.50 as payment for taking part in a study of 'punishment and learning'. 40 respondents from a range of backgrounds were selected and were told to attend the laboratory in Yale University. They were greeted by the experimenter, and were introduced to a 'supposedly' participant, Mr Wallace, but actually he was a confederate. They were both experienced to a role-assignment but it was rigged so that the real participant was the teacher. The experimenter explained to the teacher that it was his job to teach the learner a series of word pairs and then test their recall. If an error was made in the answer, an electric shock was made, starting from 15V working upwards each time. As the shocks became higher, the learner screamed and became more dramatic, and complained of a weak heart at around 180V. The participants showed signs of extreme tension, even showing nervous laughing fits, but they were still told to 'please go on' even though they didn't want to continue. Along side that, when the teacher refused

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
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Discuss research into stress-related illness and the immune system

Discuss research into stress-related illness and the immune system. The body's response to stress is said to have a relationship with the immune system, causing suppression. Riley conducted research to prove that stress had immunosuppressive effects on the body. He implanted cancer cells into mice, and divided them into two groups. The first group of mice were exposed to a high stress condition in which they were put on a rotating turntable for 10 minutes an hour for 3 days. The second group mice did not experience this high stress condition. Riley found that the cancer cells had developed into tumours in the 'stressed' mice and that their leucocyte levels were reduced, and that tumour growth had ceased in the 'non-stressed' group of mice. He concluded from the findings that stress was causing the immune system to function improperly and could therefore not control the tumour growth, and the reduced leucocyte levels also suggested a weakening of the immune system. In another study - Kiecolt-Glaser (1995) - further research and evidence was obtained to support the relationship between stress and suppressive effects on the immune system. They looked at chronic and naturally occurring stress in 13 female individuals, who had been caring for a relative with Alzheimer's disease for an average of 8 years. There was a control group for the experiment of 13 females matched to the

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
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Research question - Is using dogs for work ethical?

Dog behaviour CDA Introduction There are many ways that animals are connected to our lives. Some of us have them as pets, and even people who don't have a pet still have products (such as medicine) that have been tested on them. According to a website called 'The vegetarian site' very well known companies such as 'Max factor', 'Vaseline' & even 'Kleenex' have products that are animal tested. Some people protest that animal testing is not ethical because of the pain the animals have to endure for our benefit, but others argue that a lot of the medicine we have now wouldn't of existed if it hadn't of been so. A lot of argument has also gone into the concept of conditioning. We condition animals and even people without noticing we are doing it. Dogs are trained to sniff drugs in an airport and even children have a daily bed time that they are used to. So when J.B Watson sprung a debate about ethics when he conditioned Little Albert (who was just a baby at the time) to be afraid of rats and other things that looked similar, he had opened a controversy. Does there have to be pain to gain? Or will we ever find out if a dog thinks it is ethical for itself to be entered into a race? We were studying at school the behaviour and characteristics of animals that are similar to those of human beings alongside the ethics to support the current world debates & trends. This particular

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  • Subject: Science
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(Descriptive Writing) Describe the sights and sounds of a market place

(Descriptive Writing) Describe the sights and sounds of a market place It was past 5:30pm and was almost getting dark. We had run down like hooligans which made us breath so heavily after we arrived. All the stalls were open now, lit with their lanterns, lamps and hanging bulbs that attracted a lot of mosquitoes and other flying insects. There were lots of pigeons on top of the opposite building and you could hear the constant cawing of the crows. We stood at the edge of the left hand side road as people passed by. The noises were very loud; people talking in all sorts of languages, the daily noise of traffic, constant horns of cars and buses. Both of us were a bit dazed with what we were actually sent down for and got back to work as it hit us. First we walked by a women in an old yellow sari who was sitting on her plain mat on which she had laid out all her vegetables. She shooed the flies every now and then which sat on her vegetables. We glared at the list in my hand that read "4 good tomatoes and potatoes". We hardly searched for the good ones the women was already set to it and asked us how many. Her hands were dark and wrinkly as you could see the faintly visible tattoo on her arm which kept reappearing as she picked out the best potatoes and tomatoes. She handed us the blue plastic bag in which she had just put the vegetables in. She smiled and you could see her

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  • Subject: English
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p1: explain the purpose and role of research for the health and social care sector

P1: Explain the purpose and role of research for the health and social care sectors. Research is an intellectual investigation to get a greater knowledge or understanding of events, behaviours and theories. Research is very active and systematic process of inquiry aimed at revising, discovering and interpreting facts and also for law establishment and theories. Many organisations have research as an essential tool, though it is exceptional in the health and social care industry. Research in health and social care is for: * Demographic. Prior to planning the delivery of services. Establishing population patterns and statistics. * Epidemiology. Exploring patterns of disease. * Quality assurance. Feedback from service user about service. * Hypothesis. Exploring theories. * Knowledge. To extend understanding of theories * Reviewing and monitoring changes in practice. When health and social care practitioners are planning a new service they need to do research which focuses on the demographic data such as: population size, age, gender etc. This is so the practitioners can predict and plan for the future. Epidemiology investigates the cause, prevalence and spread of disease. Therefore the feedback from this research is very important and it is to help develop strategies to prevent and treat diseases. An example of this research is the United Kingdom Childhood Cancer

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  • Subject: Healthcare
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Outline and Evaluate research (theories/ and studies) into the relationship between stress and physical illness.

Outline and Evaluate research (theories/ and studies) into the relationship between stress and physical illness. 18 marks Stress is an example of a behavior and experience explained in physiological and psychological terms. Recently awareness has been highlighted concerning harmful effects of stress on our lives and how it can be managed and prevented. Stress is often associated with anxiety, strain, tension, distress and fatigue. The effects of stress include biochemical physiological and psychological changes, most show with ill health or unusual behavior. Therefore medical and psychological research findings in this area are crucial in aiding our understanding of the issue. Stress is usually the way we perceive stressors e.g. divorce, and the way we feel we are able to cope with things. If we cannot cope with the situation we are faced with, then we experience psychological and physiological responses to the stressor. In the short term, stress can be quite stimulating and motivating. In the long term stress can result in illness and even death. During a state of stress, the sympathetic area of the nervous system stimulates the adrenal medulla to release the hormones adrenaline and non-adrenaline into the bloodstream. These hormones stimulate heart rate and cause the body to use extra energy resources in the body. This enables the body to deal with the stressor by

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
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OCR G543 - Evaluate the use of a longitudinal research design when considering upbringing as an explanation for criminal behaviour.

Forensic Psychology Q) Evaluate the use of a longitudinal research design when considering upbringing as an explanation for criminal behaviour. (15) A) Longitudinal studies are psychological investigations carried out over a long period of time, or at various intervals over a long period of time. They allow psychologists to study changes in behaviour and, for instance, partiality to crime, and how this behaviour and the attitudes of those partaking in such behaviour change over time and why. But there is a flaw in the fact that longitudinal studies like Farrington, et al.’s, have many extraneous variables that can affect the validity of the results. This is not an issue for studies like Wikstrom & Täfel’s Peterborough Youth Study, which was a snapshot study – a study conducted at just one point in time – and consists of a singular analysis of the school reports of 2,000 14/15 year olds and one interview, thus making the practicality of psychological research far easier than the 40 year-long longitudinal study Farrington conducted. On top of this, the most commonly used approach to collecting data from longitudinal research is self report; both Farrington and Wikstrom & Täfel used them. Self report techniques are a good indicator of partiality to criminal behaviour because you can ask personal questions and learn about smaller crimes that unreliable criminal

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
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OCR G544 - Using examples of research that you have studied, discuss the strengths and limitations of using the nurture debate to explain human behaviour (12 marks)

Nature vs. Nurture Q1) Using examples of research that you have studied, discuss the strengths and limitations of using the nurture debate to explain human behaviour. (12) The nurture debate in psychology aligns itself with explaining all human behaviour as a product of the environment that an individual lives in. It suggests that the people we interact with, the homes we grow up in and even the school experiences we have as we grow up are all influential on our behaviour later in life. In the longitudinal study by Farrington, et al. into delinquent development of boys in East London, he found that there are environmental factors that directly influence why young offenders become adult criminals. Negative school experiences, weak family bonds and growing up in an impoverished area where life prosperity is low were all contributing risk factors, but even so, this study does not attribute any behaviour to the nature side of the debate and therefore ignores important genetic factors that may also predetermine behaviour from birth (such as explored in a study by Raine where he observed brain dysfunction as a reason the crimes committed by serial murderers). Another weakness of the nurture debate is shown in Meichenbaum’s study, whereby a comparison group of students suffering exam anxiety enrolled on a course of systematic desensitisation – a behavioural method of treating

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Psychology
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