ShmoopTube

00:00

finance a la shmoop what is arbitrage? not yourbritage or mybitrage but

00:08

arbitrage what it's been a while since we conjugated anything around here oh ok [Man talking about arbitrage]

00:14

so moving on arbitrage is a riskless trade you make guaranteed profits just

00:20

for being on top of things or in the right place at the right time or you're

00:25

there when opportunity comes a-knockin think about the stock exchanges in the [Men working in stock exchange]

00:29

pre-internet era around the world communication well it was relatively

00:34

slow and expensive back then especially when it came to sharing data one [Man talking into olden microphone]

00:38

relatively easy arbitrage or riskless trade opportunity that came about was

00:44

when stocks traded at one price on the various european exchanges versus the

00:50

prices it traded at on the US exchanges like shares of IBM might have been [Share price graph of IBM]

00:55

offered for sale at $165 32 cents on the london stock exchange even net of

01:01

currency conversion prices remember the Brits were on the pound system but in

01:05

the US investors were paying $165 47 cents a share

01:10

so an easy 15 cents a share was made all day long in buying the shares of IBM in

01:16

London and then just selling him back here in New York well both sides of the

01:20

trade were made at the same time it was riskless it was arbitrage and arbitrage

01:26

became a whole industry for a while until the capital markets went to work

01:30

and spreads tightened as communication got more liquid and people sprayed a [Spreads word becomes narrower]

01:35

bunch of wd-40 on information passing around the world and then that 15 cent [15 cents transfers from US to England]

01:40

spread from London to New York became more like a penny or a tenth of a penny

01:44

or at least close enough of a spread so that it was no longer worth bothering to

01:49

try and make a buck or a billion whatever those arbitrageours made in

01:53

those days

Full Transcript