The Market Structure Map
July 16, 2025
Does the book by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” highlight the fundamental flaw in AI? The definition of heuristic (a key Tversky Kahneman topic) is, paraphrasing, pragmatic problem-solving, subject to vagary and error. One could say that eliminating vagary and error...
April 16, 2025
Big banks reported this week, posting record first-quarter trading profits. Buy-and-hold money didn’t drive them. We’re told by financial advisors not to trade. Buy, and hold. Don’t time the market. Sell to avoid downside and you’ll miss the market’s biggest rebounds, say the statistics. Yet...
March 19, 2025
I’ll give you a high statistical probability. The stock market this week won’t reflect “fundamentals.” Quast, you’re obsessed with your own view that the market is quantitative. No, it’s what we call “context.” The cadence and calendar of the market: Yet whatever the stock market...
February 19, 2025
Some stocks are killing it. A bunch aren’t. Jon Sindreu at the Wall Street Journal called it an “Investing Riddle” (subscription required) that stocks in the market are in turmoil but the stock market isn’t. Yesterday, the S&P 500 closed at a new record, getting...
February 12, 2025
Why do sellsiders cover beta? Quast, you’re like a Kendrick Lamar rap: inscrutable. Let me speak English. NVDA, the most widely held stock and a component of the Index Trifecta – Dow Jones Industrials, S&P 500, Nasdaq 100 – is covered by 63 sellside research...
February 5, 2025
“Really? That’s all the time you spent?” I said,”Yessir. It doesn’t take long to pull weeds.” I think I was twelve. The mailman had suggested to Walker Fry, the richest guy in Huntington, Oregon, population 530, where I grew up that the Quast kid would...