Last minute bidding on the New York Stock Exchange

The WSJ has the story (the url is better than the headline:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-closing-time-the-stock-market-heats-up-like-a-bar-at-last-call-1521038300)

What’s the Biggest Trade on the New York Stock Exchange? The Last One
"The NYSE operates between 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., but much of the action has moved to the final moments, thanks to index funds and others that flock to the day’s closing auction"

"Last year, 26% of all trading activity on the NYSE’s flagship exchange took place in the last trade of the day, up from 17% in 2012, exchange data shows. Last year, trades at the close accounted for more than 8% of trading volume in S&P 500 stocks, nearly four times what it was in 2004, according to Credit Suisse .

"While individual investors may follow the market through the day, especially in the past turbulent weeks, it is likely they own funds that track major stock indexes like the S&P 500 whose values depend on prices determined in the closing auction.

"In this auction, traders electronically send transaction orders to the NYSE, home to more than 2,000 companies that include such blue-chip names as Boeing Co. , Walt Disney Co. and Exxon Mobil Corp. The exchange’s computers match the millions of buy and sell orders, with human traders on the NYSE floor sometimes stepping in to help.

"At least $10 billion worth of shares are traded in the NYSE’s closing auction on an average day, with a final tally of stock prices typically listed by 4:05 p.m.

The “close,” as traders call it, has grown in importance as investors pour into index-mutual funds and other vehicles that passively track various stock-market indexes, including exchange-traded funds, or ETFs. "

Greece and Iran: two very different deadlines

Deadlines are often an important element of economic design, from the design of auctions like eBay's, whose auctions have a well specified deadline after which no more bids are accepted, to negotiations in which e.g. the date at which a labor contract expires may be the deadline for calling a strike.. But the deadlines in the news for a financial bailout of Greece, and Greek banks, is very different from the (repeated) deadlines for nuclear negotiations with Iran.  In the case of Greece, banks will really fail soon without some help--the deadline is real. In the case of Iran, the deadlines are supposed to concentrate the minds of negotiators, but they have already been extended multiple times...

Iran Nuclear Talks Are Extended Once Again

Greece Given Until Sunday to Settle Debt Crisis or Face Disaster

Flash sales--buying in a hurry

Time Is Money
...
"But commerce will always require the creation of scarcity, bottlenecks and stampedes. The most immediate way to do this is to make time seem tight — the going-going-gone approach to sales. For years, digital-world salespeople have been putting in overtime to resurrect the illusion that consumers must put up their money now or life will pass them by.


"Not long ago they figured it out: the online private-shopping club. It’s brilliant and insidious. No current retail trick so successfully conjures the bygone retail climate of hotness and nowness — with its proven capacity to create value — as luxuriously capitalized clothing vendors like Gilt Groupe, HauteLook and Rue La La. For shoppers who register, these services host “flash sales” — sudden sales of limited inventory that offer a seemingly exclusive group of consumers deep discounts on known labels in a few-frills atmosphere.
...

"Gilt Groupe, HauteLook and Rue La La are the holy trinity of flash-sale event dealers, at least when it comes to clothes. Know them by their five-star labels, their ticking clocks, their sheen of exclusivity and their limited searchability.


"EBay won’t be left out of the private-club revolution. The latest way to beat those preposterous M.S.R.P.’s — manufacturer’s suggested retail prices — is eBay Fashion Vault, a shopping club like Gilt Groupe but with some of the madcapness of eBay. "