Investors are busy adjusting their portfolios for a world in which interest rates rise, selling some bonds and buying others.
The rise of momentum investing — buying stocks as they rise, selling them as they fall — and of minute-by-minute market coverage in the media has made rumors more contagious and more potent, exacerbating investors' tendency to herd.
Mr. Kors, 53, and his fellow insiders have taken advantage of the steep rise, selling big blocks of stock three times, with each sale at a higher price than the previous one.
Dozens of Wall Street firms were involved in financing Enron's rapid rise, selling its stocks and bonds, arranging acquisitions and, later, putting together the off-the-book deals that masked Enron's true financial condition.
After serious reengineering, incorporation of value-added systems know-how and moving away from commoditized standard products, semis saw stable to rising sell prices and generally tight capacity from 1992 to very early 2000.
For example, Henri Matisse's Étude pour Nu rose sold for £5.9m, a record for a drawing by the artist.
Prices can soar; a bottle of Mionetto Sergio Rosé — a softly sparking blend of raboso and lagrein grapes, with notes of grapefruit, cranberry and damask rose — sells in wine shops for about $15 but is $52 here.
Almost every rose sold in the UK is grafted; breeders join the stem of one rose, the scion, to the roots of a vigorous species rose, the rootstock, until they fuse together.
"The impact of government cuts on consumer spending is still unclear and we have yet to fully understand the impact of rising selling prices on overall demand," said Wolfson.
These dour statistics, offset somewhat by international sales, come despite a season that included two huge hits: "The Avengers" took in about $620 million in North America for Disney (over $1.5 billion worldwide); and "The Dark Knight Rises" sold over $431 million in tickets for Warner Brothers (closing in on $1 billion globally).
