Market Structure Insights
March 15, 2023
Is the management team of Silicon Valley Bank a confederacy of dunces? I don’t want a cease-and-desist order from the estate of John Kennedy Toole, so let’s move along. But it’s the wrong question. By the way, across the 500+ stocks comprising the Financials sector,...
March 8, 2023
My grandparents never had a mortgage or car-payment. It’s a lesson on the stock market. Really, Quast? You’re dragging your grandparents into market structure? Well, I’m on a NIRI Virtual Chapter panel today at noon ET about the SEC’s four gargantuan regulatory disgorgements, so yeah....
March 1, 2023
“Our strategy,” said the investor-relations officer to the chief financial officer, “is to target the bottom part of the graph here.” See image, from the Investment Company Institute’s 2022 Factbook. “Hm,” said the CFO. “Looks like we need a new plan.” Yes, our profession needs...
February 22, 2023
What if everyone is wrong? That’s a lyric from Sheryl Crow’s “Letter to God” on the 2005 Wildflower album. The context for Ms. Crow was the great existential question, “What happens when we die?” I’m writing about market structure and, by extension, economics. God, market...
February 15, 2023
What odds are tolerable to you? If you’re betting – I don’t but follow me – you might take a longshot. Low odds, big returns. But in investor-relations we’re playing with house money. It belongs to shareholders. The odds that we can grow shareholder-value by...
February 8, 2023
Jay Powell reads fiction and plays guitar. Interviewer David Rubenstein, a founder of The Carlyle Group, was downright funny talking to the Federal Reserve chair yesterday. He said, “Your hair is pretty short for a guitar player.” He also asked Mr. Powell if he ever...