The Market Structure Map
March 27, 2024
Vanguard founder Jack Bogle said to own the averages. Index funds. That seed germinated into a tree that filled the investment world. Look at Blackrock. More on Larry Fink in a moment. Most of the top 25 owners of US stocks follow models. The constituency...
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...
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...
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...
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...
January 24, 2024
If I said the name “Sherlock Holmes” to you, what’s your snap response? Probably, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” I have long favored a line by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, written for his fictitious detective Sherlock Holmes. Eliminate the impossible and what remains, no matter how...