Market Structure Insights
January 10, 2012
At county fairs when I was a kid you could buy a “Shoshoni Weather Gauge,” which hawkers said could forecast the weather like an American Indian. It was a rock tied with a leather strand to a wooden stand. The instructions said: “If rock is...
January 4, 2012
Happy New Year! If the holidays this year seemed sweeter, the air more welcome to the well-caroled note, it’s probably because I’ve been quiet for two straight weeks. And with good reason. The lovely KQ and I winged southward with fellow wayfarers for time over...
December 13, 2011
Editorial Note: This Market Structure Map first ran June 29, 2010. It’s reprinting because Tim Quast is following the lead of congresspersons by taking a “fact-finding junket” aboard a sailing vessel off the coast of Belize. It’s in the public interest. Oscar Wilde said that...
December 9, 2011
Say you were playing poker. I don’t mean gambling, but real cards. You’re engaged with some seriousness. You’re watching how you bet and when, reading the players ahead and after you. Then The House starts doling out stacks of chips. Would you play more or...
November 29, 2011
Belated Happy Thanksgiving! After breaking for a week as an act of giving thanks, we’re back. Karen and I joined 88,622 others in Aggieland at Kyle Field in College Station for the A&M football game last Thursday versus the Texas Longhorns. Disappointing outcome, great Thanksgiving....
November 16, 2011
Apparently, exchanges are not bastions of deep liquidity. In a bombshell dropped at a congressional hearing yesterday, top executives for the NYSE and the Nasdaq proposed – to borrow from humorist Dave Barry, we SWEAR we are not making this up – that you pay...