You seem to have interpreted “Black market” as purely an illegal market. While in some cases that is true, a wider definition includes non-transparent markets.

Workers in various industries were issued coupons that could be exchanged for ownership shares in said industries. These were eminently “tradeable” and were actively traded. So much so that foreign investors purchased huge tranches, thus effectively taking large equity positions.

Thus even within communist economies trading continues unabated. Certainly political positions are highly advantageous to facilitating any trading opportunities, but as we already know, that is no different in a “capitalist” economy.

There are many more examples across all asset classes.

jog on
duc

There was a bit of an uproar (among bloggers, anyway) when shorting stocks was banned recently, but imagine if you were also prohibited from holding other currencies. And if you were found to trade currency you would most likely be jailed for 2-5 years.

Most people had nothing to do with any type of investing/trading of commodities, stocks or even real estate (not much anyway) for fear of going to prison for speculation. There were no stocks to be had, black market or not. Real estate speculation existed but it mainly had to do with marriage scams 🙂

So you have a lot fewer people participating in the market that is missing a lot of the basic investment classes, which I think changes the nature of dealings a lot.

You only have a certain number of investment classes, cash, commodities, real estate, real assets or common stocks [manufacturing plant for example] Bonds [debt]

Do you think in a communist regime, that these somehow change or go away?
The ease of trading, or transparency may well be difficult or opaque, but they are all still present, correct and accounted for.

Black markets flourished during Soviet times in all their satellite states

jog on
duc

I’ll competely understand if you don’t want to discuss this further; present is so much more interesting than the past 🙂

With regards to Eastern Europe, absolutely things from an investment perspective stayed the same.

Inflation/Deflation, booms/busts are natural phenomena of financial markets and human nature. Call it capitalism/communism, the end results and intervening fluctuations have not yet invalidated speculation nor investment principals.

jog on
duc

I still prefer my Avant browser 🙂

I’m not sure about a crash. Crashes themselves don’t scare me, permanent changes do. As you very well know, when there’s a regime or other change, wealth is usually taken away or destroyed.

(Thanks for the software link. I’m testing out different ones now.)