CompanyOskar Petersohn, who had been a Bankier from 1886 to 1931, held the principle of being an honorable merchant in high esteem. Thus, he had placed great importance on passing these professional principles and life-style on to following family generations. In direct family succession of this respected man, there is commitment to his principles of honesty, truthfulness and unconditional reliability in the modern age of digital exchange trading.
Appreciation of clients, best conditions, transparency and an enormous variety of products are solid building blocks that make AGORA direct™ to one of the distinguished products in the brokerage business. AGORA direct ™, provides its customers with first-class global stock market access, in cooperation with leading international brokers. Individually supported by competence and knowledge, clients will be individually cared for. You will receive competent support in trading and managing your account.
Agora direct™ was developed via several stages to turn it into a leading platform for online stock exchange trading.
"Agora direct opens up horizons on stock exchanges"
Agora direct™ offers a real-time trading system for European, US, Canadian and Asian stock exchanges.
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Almost every kind of services for financial investments in Europe require a legally regulated permit from a supervisory body. AGORA direct does not provide any regulated financial services within the meaning of the German Banking Act KWG.
One of the most memorable speculation stories took place in the Netherlands between 1633 and 1637.
Until this time tulips were popular with rich merchants because of their beauty and they were a kind of status symbol to demonstrate prosperity. There were more than 130 types of these very beautiful, but delicate and fragile flowers.
The rarity of exotic tulips and the level of interest in this luxury product caused prices to constantly rise over the years. At some point in time, the first business people gained an interest in tulips – or rather, they were interested in the rising prices. The rapid onward sale of tulip bulbs with high profits triggered a real frenzy of business activity.
A complete house was paid for in 1633 with just three tulip bulbs.
New types of tulip bulbs were continually reaching the market during this initial phase of “the heyday of tulips”. Nobody knew whether they were beautiful or particularly beautiful, large or small or healthy or sick or whether they would produce many new bulbs or none at all.
Despite this, not only merchants, traders or speculators were buying the tulip bulbs but also almost anybody, ranging from farmers to servant girls. Huge amounts of money, often scraped together or borrowed, flooded the tulip market. People had ideas about profits here that made any working wage appear ridiculous.
Prices rose and rose - everybody made gains and wanted to earn more profits and nobody wanted to miss the opportunity. This was supposed to continue forever and nobody could or wanted to imagine an end to this madness. However, as prices rose and the tulips became increasingly rare, the purchasers did not recognise that many almost worthless sorts of tulips were being bought and sold. Until this time, the bulbs were only traded for about 3 months a year, i.e. during the time after they were dug up. The introduction of all-year trading on certificates of eligibility with a partial disbursement and intermediate trading of these certificates was probably the high point of this apparent multiplication of finances.
More expensive than gold, traded at new stock exchanges with few rules and often overvalued or paid for with money from loans, the prices suddenly stopped rising – which was as inexplicable as at the start of this madness. The first people sold their bulbs and others heard that some people had sold them and suddenly everybody wanted to sell them. But purchasers were few and far between and the prices fell to rock-bottom levels.
February 1637 was the ruin of many and ended the Dutch tulip fraudulent system from one day to the next.
In a manner similar to the Grimm brothers, who wrote very successful fairy stories, the Hunt brothers (Nelson Bunker Hunt, William Herbert Hunt and Lamar Hunt) wanted to become very rich by speculating on silver.
Once upon a time, there was a small and manageable silver market…
The price of silver was supposedly low with market prices of about US$ 3 per ounce. The Hunt brothers believed that because the silver market is and was relatively small, they could dominate the market easily as they wanted by investing several billion US dollars and therefore manipulating the prices in their favour (1973). They bought up huge amounts of silver, ounce by ounce – directly or by making use of Arab or Brazilian partners – and really horded the silver until they owned about half the silver available and had therefore artificially reduced the silver market. Because they made constant purchases, created a shortage as a result and circulating rumours, the price for an ounce of silver rose to almost US$ 50.
But as so often, the final bill was not settled until the end in the case of any speculation: the exceedingly high price of silver proved to be attractive for profit taking.
Table silver and jewellery were sold, coins were melted down in order for people to benefit from the sale of silver (1979). As a result, the manipulated price structure for “silver” collapsed and the New York Stock Exchange stopped all trading in silver before the Hunt brothers were able to realise their profits. They lost about US$ 2 billion for manipulating the price of silver – it is often referred to as the “silver plot” or “silver corner”.
