Use of 'M' and 'MM'

[EZ_Ciba]

I'm reading ESPN, and I see "NHL claims $300M in losses." I think yeah, BFD! I then read the article and realize that someone left off the second M.

That's the difference between newsworthy and stupid.

[EZ_Prenn]

How do you misplace 300 M&Ms?

What the hell is MM? M squared? That's 300 trillion dollars? No, that's not right. Sensei Pren{Dragon Army}[Tribunal Server]
So I take shelter in tomorrow
Tomorrow will bring a brand new day
Think I can make it right tomorrow,
Think I need more sleep today...

[EZ_Ciba]

$300M = $300,000.00 = $300 Thousand
$300MM = $300,000,000.00 = $300 Million

[Elerion]

Eh? I thought K was thousands and M was millions *shrug*

[EZ_Ciba]

Not when you deal with money.

[EZ_Nyssa Rainwhisper]

I thought the same, Elerion. Must be that new math stuff. *shrug*

[EZ_Ciba]

And prenn, MM essentially is M^2, but use M the roman numeral representative of 1,000.

[EZ_Nyssa Rainwhisper]

If you're talking roman numerals then yes, but in pop culture such as ESPN 'M' means millions. To say that the "NHL claims $300M in losses" and use 'MM' is redundant. People would read it as, "NHL claims $300 million million in losses."

[EZ_Ciba]

Nyssa, I'm referring to the financial industry. Banks and other financial institutions use the terminology I'm referring to.

[EZ_Prenn]

Roman numerals? Uh. MM is 2000 then. Romans weren't down with that 'algebra' @#%$, putting letters next to eachother subtracted and added them, it didn't multiply them.

What we've got here is a hybrid bastardization. Since we're talking about accountants, I am not surprised.

[Nimmbull]

Don't be a dink. It means something different in the mainstream world- so that's how they report it. They're not broadcasting to people exclusively in the financial world.

Therefore:
$300M means 300 million
$300K means 300 thousand

[EZ_Ciba]

I never accused it of being logical, but reporters could at least use industry-appropriate terminology!

[EZ_Ciba]

If I had my way, it would be reported as $3 x 10^8.

[EZ_Zyzzyx]

And from reading the title, here I thought this was going to be something about M&Ms. Mebbe Skittles had started putting letters on their candies... <shrug>

[EZ_Prenn]

They don't put little S's on them?

[EZ_Telurinon]

Seems pretty obvious that the financial industries are simply being non-standard and non-comforming to generally accepted practices. Bastards.

[EZ_Nyssa Rainwhisper]

Quote:It means something different in the mainstream world- so that's how they report it. They're not broadcasting to people exclusively in the financial world.

My point exactly. If say you were reading an article on the Laci Peterson trial, and the author wrote it in nothing but legalese, not very many people would read it or can understand it outside of the legal profession. Authors have to cater to mainstream "dummy" terms. Anything more 'official' than that would only get viewed as pompous, much like pretentious lawyers who insists on using legalese rather than simple common every day terms.

Quote:I'm reading ESPN, and I see "NHL claims $300M in losses."

The rest of us views "M" used in the context mention here as "million" not roman numerals or like the financial text book glossary. You were reading ESPN, not the Wall Street Journal or any other financial publication. Sports is their industry, not finance. They write to cater to their general audience, not just Wall Street snobs. Edited by: Nyssa Rainwhisper at: 9/19/03 2:01 pm

[EZ_Pedric Cuf]

In summary, K is thousands but with the metric system. It's just basically moving the decimal over to the right three places. M indeed is 1000 in Roman Numerals, and Prenn is 100% correct that MM would be added and not multiplied to equal a million, so that is indeed a bastardization. And I have no idea what ESPN was trying to say. So I guess we haven't made an ounce of progress.

[EZ_Loxmyf]

In Australia, anyone reporting to lose $300M is losing $3,000,000. You can prove this yourself by going to the company website and looking in the financial reports, or annual reports. The annual reports always show figures, not abbreviations.

e.g.
ekati.bhpbilliton.com/docs/2000SEAReportNorthernSpending.pdf shows:

Top of page 3
Quote:The total cumulative spending for the Operations Phase is $671,921,024.33

Therefore the media show that as "BHP spent $672M"

The only time "MM" shows up in the media is in words like "communucation, communism, programme" etcetra.

Edit: spelling
Loxmyf's Profile, Edited by: Loxmyf at: 9/19/03 4:47 pm

[Darkefang]

Using M instead of MM is standard for all journalists. Part of my job is reading various finance and banking journals, including Euromoney, Euroweek, The Banker, Institutional Investor, LatinFinance, Asiamoney, Investor's Relations Monthly, Fortune, The Economist, blah blah blah. None of the periodicals I read use MM for millions.

Anything reported in the mainstream media almost always going to be a big number, over a million. Deals for $100,000 aren't really newsworthy. M is million, bn is billion and any other numbers are rarely reported. Anything below a million is recorded in millions. For example, 700,000 would be 0.7m.

[EZ_Filan Fyretracker]

i have never seen MM used for million in my entire life, $100M=$100,000,000.

[EZ_Shanar]

I think it's universally acceppted that banks are run by complete asshats anyhow.. While the world changes via necessity banks stubbornly want to do things their own way.. Seriousl you should see some of the archaic @#%$ I had to deal with setting up credit card validation.. It's ridiculous.

300M = $300 Million

@#%$ The Bankers.
Shanar Nefandus
Level 65 Deciever of Bristlebane
Leader of The Immortalis Extrahi

[Jem]

How annoying would it be if they tried to apply the same logic to K.


$3K = 3,000.00

$3KK = 3,000,000.00

3KK.... ewww Wraine aka "The Spine Tickler!"
Moderator O'Dethe
"It has.. It has a meter that is tricky. A little wicky wacky wicky..."

[Nocte]

MM is pretty standard when talking "Wall Street," but that's the only industry in which it's used (that I'm aware of anyway). It is used for financial representation in proposals, press releases, and all other public discourse and release information. Its a goofy standard that only Wall Street uses.


Learned that it Business Writing 101. Honest to God.
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[EZ_Filan Fyretracker]

when i see MM i think of Mistmore =x

[EZ_Nyssa Rainwhisper]

LOL with LDoN I just think of a Mistmoore Mission.

[EZ_Northerner]

From metric, K is for Kilo (10^3) and M is for Mega (10^6). The notation is quite correct as it stands.

EDIT: Actually, 'k' is the proper metric for 10^3 but I guess 'K' is used quite often. 'M' however is not interrchangeable with 'm'. Edited by: Northerner at: 9/22/03 7:05 pm

[EZ_Ronaan]

Quote:How annoying would it be if they tried to apply the same logic to K.

$3K = 3,000.00
$3KK = 3,000,000.00

well it's the same logic

$3M = $ 3 Mille (means 1000 in latin/whateva) = $3k = $ 3,000.-
$3MM = $ 3 Mille Mille (1000 * 1000) = $3,000.- * 1000 = $ 3,000,000.-

most financial terms come from latin language. try looking up "bankrupt" and its origins for example.

oh and i don't deal with millions so i could care less i guess.

[EZ_nekoken]

Quote:From metric, K is for Kilo (10^3) and M is for Mega (10^6). The notation is quite correct as it stands.

Thanks Northerner. Was wondering if I was going to have to actually say this 20some replies into the thread.

Anyway, the banking industry is a bunch of wanks. If they want to represent crap in roman numerals they should do it all the way. Mixing two different numeric systems is just foolish.

[EZ_Filan Fyretracker]

so to a banker i have 1024MM bytes of memory in my PC? =p

[Yalum]

I think to a banker you would have 1074MM. They're the type to think a million is 10^6 rather than 2^20.

[EZ_Ishwar2]

To mess things forther up

'K' has no value. 'k' on the other hand is 1000. 'M' is 1000000, extept when dealing with bytes in which case it is 1024*1024 or 2^20 = 1048576.

I had never heard the finincial industry was messed and didnt know ther unit prefixes. I guess next ill find out that the banks think 10^8 means 10.8 or something.

In additíon the use of '$' is wrong, thew correct term would be 'USD' if it was us dollar in question. Ishwar - level 63 Barbarian Rogue - GM smith Edited by: Ishwar2 at: 9/24/03 2:48 am

[EZ_Ciba]

Quote:In additíon the use of '$' is wrong, thew correct term would be 'USD' if it was us dollar in question.

Not true, in a credit write-up and such, you will still see $. The only time you see USD is when you deal with the international department of a bank.

[EZ_Northerner]

That's actually a domestic issue more than anything and should be properly footnoted or clarified in finacial documents. Normally there is a standard "in compliance with" clause to cover it though. $US, $CAN or $AUS is common if there is any chance of confusion. It isn't wrong to just use '$' in an American publication though of course.

MB is a different case though, stemming from the nature of binary counting. While perhaps not 'pure' metric (there is a class-action lawsuit out over this right now actually), it is perfectly correct in context, much like MM is perfectly correct in it's contexts.