Market Structure Insights

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April 23, 2025

It was never about Jay Powell. It was options. As the market reeled Monday, the Talking Heads declaimed that Donald Trump was responsible: He was going to fire Jay Powell. We said before the market faceplanted and recovered that it would likely fall Monday with...

dreamstime m 65910206
April 16, 2025

Big banks reported this week, posting record first-quarter trading profits. Buy-and-hold money didn’t drive them. We’re told by financial advisors not to trade. Buy, and hold. Don’t time the market. Sell to avoid downside and you’ll miss the market’s biggest rebounds, say the statistics. Yet...

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April 9, 2025

As one of our team said, “The Quast Vacation Put strikes again.” Wearing puka shells and vacation pants, we split March 25 for the trade winds of St Vincent and the Grenadines to sail the following seas. And the stock market crumbled. You can see...

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March 26, 2025

Long ago, I saw a band called Mars Volta, which opened for Incubus in Sacramento. Boy, I’ve dated myself now.  Incubus was awesome, Brandon Boyd writhing on the stage and telling us to take the wheel and drive.  Mars Volta couldn’t finish a song. So...

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March 19, 2025

I’ll give you a high statistical probability. The stock market this week won’t reflect “fundamentals.” Quast, you’re obsessed with your own view that the market is quantitative.  No, it’s what we call “context.” The cadence and calendar of the market: Yet whatever the stock market...

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March 12, 2025

In Clint Eastwood’s 1992 movie Unforgiven, the scrolling script claims his character William Munny is of “notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.” Rather like the stock market.  A theme of the movie is: What you were may revisit you. Same in the stock market. And the...

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