I am making a presentation for a finance class. We are looking to see if there is any relationship between the rise of the 401(k) and the total amount of money in the financial markets (only the stock markets, if possible). To do my part I need to find the total amount of money in the financial markets (or the stock market), and I am having trouble finding it. Any help is appreciated.
The thing is, there is no money in the stock market. None at all. It’s all company property represented by share certificates for the publicly traded companies.
Perhaps you can find out the prices people paid for shares and the number of shares they’ve bought. And if you multiply the two, then you will find out the total amount of money people paid for shares on a given day.
But even this number would be approximate and not exact. Because stock prices change throughout the trading day. And there is no easy way to find out the average stock prices for the whole day.
You can find historical price and volume information like that for the New York Composite Index for example. Or S&P 500.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=^NYA
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=^GSPC
But these indexes are only representative of the market. They are not the whole market.
December 1st, 2009 at 3:48 am
The thing is, there is no money in the stock market. None at all. It’s all company property represented by share certificates for the publicly traded companies.
Perhaps you can find out the prices people paid for shares and the number of shares they’ve bought. And if you multiply the two, then you will find out the total amount of money people paid for shares on a given day.
But even this number would be approximate and not exact. Because stock prices change throughout the trading day. And there is no easy way to find out the average stock prices for the whole day.
You can find historical price and volume information like that for the New York Composite Index for example. Or S&P 500.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=^NYA
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=^GSPC
But these indexes are only representative of the market. They are not the whole market.
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