The British Railway Mania

How a disruptive technology created the biggest speculative bubble in the history of England

/THREAD/

1/ Railways were the most disruptive technology of the 19th century, known as the "railway age", transforming England from an agricultural to an industrialized nation.
2/ The development of railway infrastructure and locomotives started at the end of the 18th century but experienced immense growth after 1830.
3/ Hundreds of railway related bills were passed every year with proposed rails totaling 10,000 miles, a third of which was never built due to poor financial planning, competition, or fraud.
4/ In the mid-1840s, the Bank of England cut interest rates rendering government bonds unattractive, and investors more willing to rush in the railway investments.
5/ In 1825 the Bubble Act, passed after the South Sea Bubble in 1720, was repealed enabling easier formations of companies and ventures.

*For more on the South Sea Bubble see below
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6/ The lack of regulation, and the media promotion attracted many investors who could purchase shares of railway companies with just a 10% deposit, with many middle-class families investing their entire savings.
7/ The railway network expanded from less than 100 miles in 1830 to 6,000 miles in the late 1840s connecting all the major cities in the country.
8/ The disruptive potential of the railway technology made investors to rush in for investing, with the invested capital exceeding 1/3 of the country's GDP by 1850.
9/ Many entrepreneurs got into financing, constructing, and operating the railway lines gaining immense wealth.

Most notable among them was George Hudson who operated 1/3 of the railway lines.
10/ Shares became extremely volatile due to the mania, peaking in 1845 with the dividend rates exceeding 8%.

In 1845, investors started realizing the financial viability of many projects was not guaranteed and the investments were not as lucrative as they had initially thought.
11/ Along with the rise of interest rates by the Bank of England and the Irish Potato Famine, money started flowing from railway investments back to government bonds.
12/ The sudden lack of interest and outflux of capital led to the bubble bursting in 1845 and the market crashing.

The shares of the railway companies dropped below half of their peak price, with dividend rates slashed to 2%.
13/ Many companies were on the brink of bankruptcy, being eventually bought out by their big competitors at a fraction of their value.
14/ After the bubble burst and mania fizzled, the improper business practices of George Hudson were revealed.

Hudson, also a member of the British parliament, had engaged in bribery, embezzlement, and insider trading.
15/ Hudson's operations were basically a Ponzi scheme using the invested capital by new investors to pay the dividend to the old investors.
16/ The industry rebounded after 1850 but never reached the levels of the 1845 mania, due to the maturity of the industry and the government regulation.

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The Mother of All Squeezes

How Volkswagen went from being on the brink of bankruptcy to the most valuable company in the world in two days

/THREAD/


1/ At the peak of the 2008 financial crisis, Volkswagen was considered a very likely candidate for bankruptcy.

Heavily indebted and already financially struggling before 2008, with car sales expected to plummet due to the ongoing global crisis.


2/ With GM and Chrysler filing for bankruptcy in 2009, shorting the VW stock would seem a safe bet.

If you are not familiar with stock shorts and short squeezes check my thread


3/ On October 26, 2008, Porsche announced it had increased its stake at VW from 30% to 74%.

This was a surprise to many who were led to believe that Porsche wasn't planning a takeover of VW, based on the company's announcements.


4/ Before the announcement, the short interest was approximately 13% of the outstanding shares, a number considered relatively low.

Porsche had a 30% stake, the Lower Saxony government fund held 20% of the shares, and another 5% was held by index funds.

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Ok here is the explanation. Grab a cup of coffee and read on. If you have not read/noticed this, you will see intraday options movement in a new light.


Say we have two options, one 50 delta ATM options and another 30 delta OTM option. Normally for a 100 point move, the ATM option will move 50 points and the OTM option will move 30 points. But in a high volatile environment, the OTM option will also move nearly 50 points

To understand why this happens, first understand why an ATM option is 50 delta. An ATM option has the probability of 50% of expiring as ITM. The price just has to close a rupee above the strike for the CE to be ITM and vice versa for PEs

Now think of a highly volatile day like today. If someone is asked where the BNF will close for the day or expiry, no one can answer. BNF can close freakin anywhere, That makes every option of an equal probability of being ITM. So all options have a 50% probability of being ITM

Hence, when a huge volatile move starts, all OTM options behave like ATM options. This phenomenon was first observed in the Black Monday crash of 1987 at Wall Street, which also gave rise to the volatility skew/smirk

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THREAD: 12 Things Everyone Should Know About IQ

1. IQ is one of the most heritable psychological traits – that is, individual differences in IQ are strongly associated with individual differences in genes (at least in fairly typical modern environments). https://t.co/3XxzW9bxLE


2. The heritability of IQ *increases* from childhood to adulthood. Meanwhile, the effect of the shared environment largely fades away. In other words, when it comes to IQ, nature becomes more important as we get older, nurture less.
https://t.co/UqtS1lpw3n


3. IQ scores have been increasing for the last century or so, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. https://t.co/sCZvCst3hw (N ≈ 4 million)

(Note that the Flynn effect shows that IQ isn't 100% genetic; it doesn't show that it's 100% environmental.)


4. IQ predicts many important real world outcomes.

For example, though far from perfect, IQ is the single-best predictor of job performance we have – much better than Emotional Intelligence, the Big Five, Grit, etc. https://t.co/rKUgKDAAVx https://t.co/DWbVI8QSU3


5. Higher IQ is associated with a lower risk of death from most causes, including cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, most forms of cancer, homicide, suicide, and accident. https://t.co/PJjGNyeQRA (N = 728,160)