[widebody911]

I understand the concept of IPO's, etc. I'm talking about the secondary markets. Let's say there's an IPO, and 100 shareholders. If one of those shareholders wants to cash in, he has to either convince one of the 99 other shareholders to buy him out, or he has to find some new chumps to take the stock off his hands. Now, if he wants to sell the shares for more than he paid, the odds are probably stronger he'll have to find new chumps. On a broader scale, since everyone wants to sell share for more than they paid, they need to find 'new' people to buy them (that's the Ponzi part), and they have to hype it up to make them want to pay more. That's where the 'analysts' come in - their real job is to instill 'market sentiment'.