There’s a saying: It’s easier to keep the cat in the bag than to get it back in there once you’ve let it out. Nobody is likely to stuff the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) cat back in the bag.

Because ETFs are miraculous.

The biblical story of creation is that something came from nothing. Same with the Christian concept of redemption – being bought for a price without rendering equal worth in kind.

Today, we’ll share with occupants of the IR chair the divine story of how ETFs work.

Before ETFs were closed-end mutual funds. Closed end funds (CEFs) are publicly traded securities that IPO to raise capital and pursue a business objective (like any business), in this case an investment thesis. Traded units have a price, and the net asset value rises and falls on the success of managers in achieving objectives. The rub with CEFs is that share value can depart from net asset value – just like stocks often separate from intrinsic business worth.

The investment industry, with support from regulators, devised ETFs to magically remedy through Creation and Redemption this fault of nature. ETF kingpin iShares, owned by Blackrock, illustrates here, with a clever floral analogy (thank you Joe Saluzzi at Themis Trading who alerted us to it). You don’t have to buy individual flowers and face market risks because iShares puts them in a bouquet for you. Great idea. Continue reading →

Having never gone to a Neighborhood Pumpkin-Carving, we were wistful when squirrels promptly devoured the face off our finished product (marked “easiest” in the booklet of pumpkin-carving patterns we purchased). Ah well. What some consider a jack-o-lantern others see as a meal.

Speaking of scary, for those keeping record we note more currency-driven events to explain to your executives. First, the European Central Bank last week threw down the red carpet for Greek lenders, so the dollar dived and stocks soared on changes to perceived risk and anticipated further global currency-printing. On Halloween, Japan intervened to weaken the yen by buying other currencies, so the dollar strengthened (less supply, same demand) and markets plunged. On Nov 1, fear of setbacks on the Greece deal drove risk managers back to the dollar, pushing it up and stocks down more.

US markets should be proxies for fundamental value and forward multiples of collective corporate cash flows. Not meters for currency fluctuations. Happy Halloween.

Speaking of meters, there is Tom Peterffy, immigrant, billionaire, and architect of automated trading. Peterffy ranked 236th on Forbes’ list of the 400 richest in 2009, fruits of long labor revolutionizing how stocks trade. Peterffy, founder of Timber Hill and Interactive Brokers, pioneers in automated multi-asset-class electronic trading, believes automated trading goes too far. Continue reading →

Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. OODA.

This is how Pipeline Trading describes its predictive analytics for helping buyside customers identify large-block trading opportunities.

For those of you who missed the news that rocked The Street this week, Pipeline, a dark pool, was fined $1 million by the SEC for misleading clients about the nature of its liquidity.

Were you harmed? Check to see if your shares trade at Pipeli—

Oh. You can’t. It’s a dark pool. You don’t know if your shares trade there unless Pipeline’s orders route to your listing exchange.

Of Pipeline, SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement: “Investors are entitled to accurate information as to how their trades are executed.”

Pipeline offers a platform where institutional customers like mutual funds can find “natural liquidity,” or real orders from other buysiders. What’s more, Pipeline provides execution algorithms that mimic how high-frequency traders try to project price and volume in order to place profitable trades ahead of moves. If the buyside can beat HFT at its own game, then instead of being victimized, it can also generate alpha – market-beating returns on trades. Continue reading →

In politics, Bill Clinton perfected the “trial balloon.” You float an idea of one shade because you’re planning on getting people to embrace an idea of another larger construct.

In fiction writing, authors will create portent by ending a chapter with something like: “She could never have imagined the consequences of her decision.” You can’t wait to turn the page to find out what she couldn’t imagine. The writer has subtly influenced your behavior.

The Fed is always trying to influence our behavior. Market performance October 4 (today) was mostly about Fed influence. Affirming commitment as lender of last resort – which sounds good but means “we will print endless piles of cash” – is the same as devaluing the dollar. So the dollar plunged in the last hour of trading, and stocks soared. (We all want stocks to rise but think about a teeter-totter. That’s stocks and dollars.)

In trading markets, exchanges continuously toy with behaviors by changing the spreads between fees for taking shares away and credits for bringing them to sell (this is the root cause of high-frequency trading). Exchanges are influencing behaviors.

Why does it matter? IR is about influencing behavior. In the past, we did it mostly with operating results, investment thesis and investor-targeting. Today, it must go further. Do you consider the impact of Fed policy and adapt your institutional outreach to match your investment thesis to impending changes in behavior? You should. If programs stall, don’t keep talking to growth money; shift to high-turn, deep-value money. Continue reading →

Isaac Newton posited 334 years ago in his third law of motion that mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal.

I wonder what he’d think of the relationship between the US dollar and equities, where this small action produces that decidedly unequal reaction.

After the Federal Reserve acted to shore up bank balance sheets by buying long bonds and mortgage-backed securities last week, the dollar trampolined and markets dropped like Newton’s apple.

Pundits blamed dismal economic data. Yet we saw money market-wide shifting from equities September 16 with quad-witching. Before the Fed offered a dim economic portrait. If money was reacting, it sure had a funny, proactive, organized way of showing it.

Today and Monday, the dollar weakened and stocks zoomed skyward in a Newton-flummoxing frenzy to reclaim paradise lost. How many believe this is rational investment behavior? If you do, there’s a solar-panel plant in California that might interest you. Continue reading →