Just how reliable are market prices?

Especially with recent seemingly irrational volatility in the markets, I was wondering just how useful marking assets to market is. If there's trillions of dollars worth of treasuries in the market or billions of dollars with of an equity, just how useful/accurate is it to mark the value of those assets based on what trades at the moment, which accounts for only a small fraction of the total assets. For example, microsoft is a 220 billion market cap stock and a billion or two trades on the market, should all 220 billion of the stock be marked at what was recently traded?

4 Comments
 

Mark to Market is useful in situations like you described. The problem arises when you are developing an asset. Enron used the "mark to model" method, which ended so well for us, but generally with illiquid securities it is more beneficial/truthful to use Mark to model.

Reality hits you hard, bro...
 

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