what's the cliche about a market cycle

March 17, 2021 12:32 PM

what's the cliche about a market cycle moving money from the weak hands to strong hands? I can't find a definitive source of the information and my google juice is failing me.
posted by wowenthusiast to Work & Money (4 answers total)

You mean the supposed Warren Buffet quote "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." or something specifically about weak hands vs strong hands?
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:43 PM on March 17, 2021

Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered,

or

You sell when people are greedy and buy when people are fearful

The rich stay rich by spending like they’re poor and the poor stay poor by spending like they’re rich

but what I really bet you mean is

The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient
posted by Dashy at 2:27 PM on March 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

In my career I've read thousands (and thousands) of pages worth of equity, fixed income, and market analysis, and these are terms that are used with fair frequency.

"Strong hands" and "weak hands" are just shorthand (heh) for describing particular market participants, and I don't think there is an attributable quote or cliché that they originated from.

Unless someone can cite a specific source (and like you, it's something I've looked for in the past with no success), I think they're just in the category of "commonly used metaphors."

The Investopedia definitions for both strong and weak hands cover off the common usage of each pretty well, but mention no origin. They may have some tangential relationship to terminology used in modelling/testing of the "efficient market hypothesis," but the link seems tenuous to me.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:25 PM on March 17, 2021

OTOH, I'd bet the terms come from poker/card games originally.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:38 PM on March 17, 2021