Street Level
“My CEO doesn’t get market structure.” I’ve heard that more than a time or two! IROs wanting executives to grasp market complexity in order to see share-behavior in an accurate and contemporary fashion...
View ArticleStructural Distortion
“When I talk about this stuff with clients, they’re only half-listening until this phrase appears.” Thus spake my learned friend Jim MacGregor, at Abernathy MacGregor in New York City, whose views I...
View ArticleBinary IR
There’s a joke software engineers tell. There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who can count in binary and those who can’t. Nerd jokes (no offense, technology friends!) are often neither...
View ArticlePerspective
It’s not what you think. Heard that phrase before? Last Wednesday, Oct 15, apparently everybody trading equities believed the world was dissolving in an apocalyptic stew of Ebola, European recession,...
View ArticleAdapting
Happy New Year! We trust you enjoyed last week’s respite from the Market Structure Map. Now, back to reality! CNBC is leaving Nielsen for somebody who’ll track viewer data better. Nielsen says CNBC...
View ArticleBehavioral Volatility
I recall knowing one particularly volatile fellow. I should have called him VIX. Speaking of the VIX, options on that popularly titled Fear Gauge expire today as a raft of S&P components report...
View ArticleBoards Should Know
We thought we were going to need a boat. Driving into Kansas City, a torrent fell in such proportion that the sky, the landscape, the topography of the roadway, disappeared into a pelting gloom that...
View ArticleInterconnection
“I must say as to what I have seen of Texas it is the garden spot of the world.” Davy Crockett said it and left it at the Alamo. So we’re glad to be inside Austin’s city limits sponsoring the NIRI...
View ArticleCapital Caprice
Suppose gas prices changed 3% daily. Pretty soon everyone would look for patterns in volatility and start rushing to fill tanks at low ebbs. Or maybe there’d be a Gasoline Closing Cross, where petrol...
View ArticleETF Bubble
“We’re 90% in natural gas and natural-gas liquids,” said the investor-relations officer for a NYSE-listed master-limited partnership at yesterday’s NIRI luncheon in Houston, where I spoke on ETFs. “Yet...
View ArticleThe Replicator
In the television and cinematic series Star Trek, the Replicator creates stuff. Captain Jean-Luc Picard would instruct it to dispense “tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” This YouTube montage is homage. Speaking of...
View ArticlePaid to Trade
“You’re giving the exchanges so much business, they should be paying you,” said Richard Keary of Global ETF Advisors in a June 2014 Financial Times article. He was talking about Exchange Traded Funds,...
View ArticleTurnover
Earnings season. Late nights for IR professionals crafting corporate messages for press releases and call scripts. Early mornings on CNBC’s Squawk Box, the company CEO explaining what the beat or miss...
View ArticleThe Obvious
Algorithmic trading is Wall Street’s last best hope. So said the lead sentence in a story called Algo Wars in the May 30, 2005 edition of Investment Dealer’s Digest. That publication is gone and so is...
View ArticleMispricing
If the stock market reflects all information currently known, why are buyout deals nearly always done at a premium to market price? “Because, Quast, deals involve proprietary pricing models that...
View ArticleThe Vacuum
Looking around at the market, we decided the only thing to do is go to St. Maarten. Safely at sea, we’ll wait out options-expirations and the Fed meeting next week and return Dec 21 to tell you what...
View ArticleWeighing Options
There’s no denying the connection between tulips and derivatives in 1636. The Dutch Tulip Mania is often cited as the archetype for asset bubbles and the madness of crowds. It might better serve to...
View ArticleEroding Banks
“Other than that, everything’s okay.” My friend Gary, a smart guy with an MBA from the University of Chicago, uses that line to herald dire situations. It’s from the old UK sitcom starring John Cleese,...
View ArticleSide Deals
Yesterday on what we call Counterparty Tuesday, stocks plunged. Every month options, futures and swaps expire and these instruments represent trillions of notional-value dollars. Using an analogy,...
View ArticleInconvenience
Follow the money. Or the currency. Yesterday markets soared on queue with a Chinese currency devaluation in the form of lower bank reserve requirements (which increases money and reduces its value)....
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