Market Structure Insights
July 8, 2020
The price-to-earnings ratio in the S&P 500 is about 23. Is it even meaningful? Some say a zero-interest-rate environment justifies paying more for stocks. That’s compounding the error. If we behaved rationally, we’d see both asset classes as mispriced, both overpriced. All investors and all...
July 1, 2020
Happy 2nd Half of 2020! I bet we’re all glad we’re halfway there. Karen and I would’ve been in Greece now sailing the Ionian islands, luxury catamaran, sunset off starboard, Hurricane in hand. Instead my checklist leaving the house has expanded from wallet, phone,...
June 24, 2020
We’re coming to the end of two Coronavirus quarters. What happens now? In a word, July. As to what July brings, it’s summer in the northern hemisphere, winter down under. It’s also the end of a remarkable period in stocks. I don’t mean rising or...
June 17, 2020
The stock market is a story of the seen and the unseen. Ethereal, hieratic, a walk by faith not by sight kind of thing? No, not that. And by the way, I’ve not forgotten about the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey (millennials, look...
June 10, 2020
Is retail money creating a Pandemic Bubble? Sort of. Really, it’s Fast Traders turning those orders into clouds of squid ink. There are 47 million customer accounts at Schwab, Fidelity, Ameritrade, E*Trade and Robinhood. These big online brokers sell their flow to Citadel, Two Sigma,...
June 3, 2020
The question vexing Uber and Grubhub as they wrestle over a merger is which firm’s losses are worth more? And for investors considering opportunities among stocks, a larger question: What companies or industries deserve better multiples on the Federal Reserve’s backstopping balance sheet and Congress’s...