>Demand for stocks (so far as I can see) seems to have
>done nothing but increase. The only possible exception would be cash
>takeovers,
>which did slump this year. However, so far it seems that the cause of the
>decline was a dramatic increase in insider selling and IPOs. The
>basic function
>of the US stock market in the late 90s, the redistribution of wealth toward
>corporate insiders and financial intermediaries, does not appear to have been
>affected in the least by the interest rate increases.
The dot.com crowd has been dethroned. Nervousness is the predominant emotion in Silicon Alley these days - don't know what's happening in Silicon Valley, though. The NASDAQ is way off its peak <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^IXQ&d=1y>, and the broad New York Stock Exchange index <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^NYA&d=1y> has been going nowhere for a year.
Doug