I don’t think it should be overlooked that “Quants” and “Quasts” differ by only a letter.

Scott Patterson’s 2010 book, The Quants, is a great read.  You’ll be riveted by what was cascading beneath the market’s surface before the financial crisis.  Here’s a taste:

“That Wednesday, what had started as a series of bizarre, unexplainable glitches in quant models turned into a catastrophic meltdown the likes of which had never been seen before in the history of financial markets….

“Oddly, the Bizarro World of quant trading largely masked the losses to the outside world at first, since the stocks they’d shorted were rising rapidly, leading to the appearance of gains on the broader market that balanced out the diving stocks the quants had expected to rise.

“Monday, the Dow Industrials actually gained 287 points. It gained 36 more Tuesday, and another 154 points Wednesday. Everyday investors had no insight into the carnage taking place beneath the surface, the billions in hedge fund money evaporating.”

Key phrase:  Beneath the surface.

What the market appears to be saying may be the opposite of what gurgles in its depths.

It’s why we say price and volume are CONSEQUENCES, not metrics.  What’s causing price or volume to change?  This is the question every public company, every investor, should answer today (we have that data, so there’s no reason to go begging!).

Take the broad market Monday, with the Dow Industrials up 260 points. Cause? Risk Mgmt – counterparties to bets, covering their exposure.

And shorting rose. Yesterday, 47% of all volume marketwide was borrowed – short.  Intraday volatility, the average move from highest to lowest price, is 3%.

That’s 50% of market volume, combined. Can the market sustainably rise if half its volume depends on lower or fluctuating prices?  Well, it’s not impossible. But probability is poor.

High shorting doesn’t mean the market will tank. But short-covering is necessary for shares to rise.  Consider Jan 2018.  Shorting dropped, volatility vanished, stocks surged.

The VIX (coming volatility destroyed two synthetic ETFs), price and volume, gave everyday folks no clue to the looming maw.  But under the surface the gurgling hit a fever pitch. Market Structure Sentiment, our 10-point gauge of price peaks and troughs, topped Jan 19. Behavioral change was a black swan – more than three standard deviations from norms.

Behavioral change is the daily demographic evolution in the money behind price and volume. A surge is a stampede – with delayed effects. Sentiment usually says which way.

On Jan 22, the market’s Chernobyl core melted under a staggering six-standard-deviations move in behaviors.  The market continued to rise. Nobody on CNBC was warning people.

By mid-February, from peak to trough the S&P 500 fell over 10%.

On Sep 19, 2018, Market Structure Sentiment topped weakly, not even regaining 6.0 (the market trades between 4.0-6.0 most of the time).  Black swans crashed through behavioral-change Sep 14-19.  The market kept rising.

Sep 25-28, behavioral-change demolished every record we’d ever seen, cascading daily at an average six standard deviations over norms.  SPY, the S&P 500 ETF, hit 293.58 Oct 1, 2018.  Yesterday it closed at 286.87.

From its Oct 1 zenith to the Dec 24 nadir of 234.34, SPY declined 20.2%.

SPY reached an all-time peak Jul 15, 2019 as Market Structure Sentiment topped just over 6.0. And yup, you guessed it. Black swans flapped in Jul 31 and Aug 1. Another struck Aug 13.

Why has the market become so mathematical? Behaviors.  All trades must occur between the best bid and offer, and the bid must be lower. Somebody can make a half-penny on each side of the trade – the aim of Fast Traders.  Arbitrage.

ETFs have ten TIMES the assets they did in 2008 — $4 trillion in the US alone, the bulk in equities. There’s one ETF for every four companies. ETFs depend on arbitrage for prices.

Derivatives are an arbitrage trade. What is something worth now versus what it might be in the future?  Put these all together.  It’s 87% of volume. The market runs on arbitrage. Continuously differing prices.

It’s transformative to see, beneath the surface, why your stocks behave as they do.  Then what, public companies?  You have a duty to know what the money is doing and to understand when it’s story and when it’s not. That’s a puzzle solved only with data.

Investors, if you’re one day wrong, you can lose your gains.  Data are protection.

When you’re ready to go spelunking, let us know.