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How can a thing which never existed to begin with vanish? There wasn't $100B sitting around in a bank account waiting to be claimed, which then suddenly evapora

• DennisP 9y ago
  It's not only dollars that have value. Lots of assets do, like company shares. In the stock market, if a company has ten million shares at $100 each we say the company is worth a billion dollars, even though that $100 price is only the most recent transaction. We say that because if price times quantity didn't match what the overall market thinks the whole company is worth, the price would quickly correct until it did.
• jawilson2 9y ago
  What about the Financial Times? http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=market-capitalisation http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=market-capitalisation "Market capitalisation or market cap is the market value of a company's issued share capital – in other words. the number of shares multiplied by the current price of those shares on the stock market."
• everdev 9y ago
  $100B was created on paper and lost on paper. Net worth is the same concept. Jeff Bezos net worth is calculated based on how much his assets are theoretically worth based on current fair market prices. He doesn't have to sell all his assets to determine his net worth. People don't like the "lost $100B in market value" part, but it is accurate since market value is calculated on paper.