Bear Down Wildcats

What would the effect be of not having a stock market?

My initial thought is that companies would have a difficult time growing as they would have to resort to issuing debt with the debt service as opposed to raising capital through the dilution of ownership.

In effect our economy wouldn't grow as fast as employment might be an issue and wages would be held low

Doesn't pretty much every country have a stock exchange? Even Viet Nam does.

North Korea and Cuba, probably not.

Not sure what you mean by not having a stock market? I assume you mean the formal exchanges (e.g. NYSE or NASDAQ). Not having them would just lead to a more informal and disorganized market with higher transaction costs between investors and (arguably) higher issuance costs for issuers as it would be more difficult for them to locate investors (though they may have reduced compliance costs over time after issuance). There's always been, however, a larger private market of securities that do not trade over exchanges, and these are signficiantly less liquid and limited to insiders of the issuers and large institutional investors or HNWs for the most part.

azgreg wrote:What would the effect be of not having a stock market?

More frontal nudity.

Thought everyone jumped to precious metals anyway. I'm I the only one who got Percy's investment tips?