54 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE largely avoided, and great economies in the use of capital are this produced.*® Very often, the prices of securities on a stock exchange reflect future probabilities rather than present values, and this fact only increases the ability of the market more efficiently to direct capital into industry. Very often, however, this sensi- tiveness of the market to future probabilities is not sufficiently grasped by the public, and causes losses to inexperienced specu- lators and investors who, being human, are only too ready to hlame the Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve system, the “international bankers’—or anyone, in short, except them- selves. 8. Greater Stability of Capital.—The organization of security markets into stock exchanges greatly furthers the stabilization of capital. For one thing, the yields on similar securities tend to become standardized and uniform on a stock exchange, and a general average yield on bonds, and to a lesser extent on stocks, can be more readily determined. This aver- age yield on long-term investments, rough as it sometimes 1s, nevertheless is-an important factor in the whole rate-structure of the money market, and it acts and reacts upon short-term money rates with a general tendency to approximate a uniform level with them. In this way, the organized security markets play a vital part in facilitating the establishment of consistent prices for capital and credit. The securities on the Stock Exchange, as well as the loans contracted on their collateral, regularly provide a mechanism into which idle and unproductive capital can practically always be poured, and from which liquid working capital can almost always be readily obtained for industry, agriculture or trade. Since capital is in a sense a common denominator of all busi- ness, this function of the market for capital on the Stock Exchange possesses a very great economic significance which is only too frequently overlooked. During credit stringencies, 12 Cf. Appendix IId.