Off-sheet accounting

For mid-week entertainment, this full-page ad appeared in the Wall Street Journal recently:

The vertical axis says "% NYSE of All Market Share Volume".  The time-line is from July 05 to beyond July 08.  The text in the black box is "Matched Market Share: July 11, 2008".

When it's so obvious, it's probably not obvious.  The big story is off the chart: what happened to the other 50% of the volume over the years?

Faced with this, one reaches for the pie chart (... almost).

Small add (8/21/2008):

Comments

[Jon Peltier]

How relevant is share volume compared to price volume (sales in $ vs sales in units)?

[ZBicyclist]

Pie chart?? Don't even joke!

I couldn't find / couldn't be motivated to find out where the other 50% is in NYSE stocks, but this link

http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=MarketShare

shows the share of ETF volume (exchange traded funds)

NASDAQ 38%
NYSE Arca 28%
FINRA/NASDAQ TRF 14%
Other regionals and TRF 21%

[Michael]

After I quit my job from a big4 firm I was pretty worried that I wouldn’t find another one, that’s until a friend recommended me this website : http://www.big4.com/home.html .Here I found myself a job and I feel I could do a favor to everyone who is now in my former situation.

[Soren Duus]

Mistakes like that rarely happen. Hmm, the complexities in many aspects of finance and accounting may not be easily understood by different individuals. It's better for companies to avoid mistakes like that by hiring people who are well-trained and capable of refining little, or even huge, mistakes.