The Market Structure Map

dreamstime m 66699772
March 6, 2024

What the…? Everything was awesome. Monday. Then yesterday, stocks toppled like a thawed corpse in Nederland (inside joke, there). No obvious reason. Some said it was Jay Powell testifying today and tomorrow. Others claimed it was Big Tech coming apart at the seams (great song...

dreamstime l 67819586
February 28, 2024

Two things exploded in 2023. Trading in options contracts and illegal US immigration. No, I’m not suggesting they’re correlated! I note it bemusedly. But I do have a point. We need clarity. In options, the Futures Industry Association said equity-linked instruments saw volume double globally...

dreamstime l 20057394
February 21, 2024

Last week, markets were abuzz over the zero that lifted LYFT. For those who were vacationing or living hermetically and missed it, Lyft reported financial results and inadvertently added a zero to adjusted EBITDA margin-expansion, giving machines the notion profit margins improved 5% instead of...

dreamstime m 206876446
February 14, 2024

I’ve got my Valentine, for which I’m grateful every day. Whether the market finds love after yesterday’s blood remains to be seen. Back when the Romans celebrated Lupercalia, there was blood. Romans knifed a goat to arouse the gods of fertility and then flicked bloody...

dreamstime m 212403964
February 7, 2024

On Nov 15, 2021, NVDA closed at $345.30 on a hundred million shares of volume. Without context, that information is interesting but unhelpful. I’d note it was a monthly options-expirations date (those are bigger than ever for hedging, and routinely we find that Activist swaps...

dreamstime l 24803177
January 31, 2024

Consumers are confident. I’m not sure they have all the data. It’s a lesson for public companies. In case you missed it, The Conference Board’s monthly consumer confidence survey reached a two-year high. Nielson runs the survey, and The Conference Board will sell you a...

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