Market Structure Insights
September 9, 2020
Softbank bet big on call-options and Technology stocks are sinking. So goes the latest big story. Business-reporting wants a whale, a giant trade that went awry. A cause for why Tech stocks just corrected (off 10%). In reality the market today rarely works that way. ...
September 2, 2020
In Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, a collection of eccentrics finds a flaw in real estate securities and shorts them. The movie is great, the book even better. Somebody will write a book about the 2020 stock market (anyone?) flaw. The flaw? Depends who you...
August 26, 2020
Is it good to be part of the collective? From Karl Marx to Friedrich Hayek, polemics ring like swords and plowshares on anvils. But that’s not what we mean. When Vanguard in 1975 created the 500 Fund, many called it “Bogle’s Folly,” suggesting founder Jack...
August 19, 2020
Minis abound. You can trade fractions of shares. Heck, the average trade-size is barely 100 shares, and 50% of trades are less than that. Minis, as it were. There are e-mini futures contracts on the S&P 500 index, and the newer micro e-mini futures product...
August 12, 2020
The stock market’s glowing core can’t hide the dark edges – rather like this photo I snapped of the Yampa River in downtown Steamboat springs at twilight. Speaking of which, summer tinkled its departure bell up high. We saw the first yellowing aspen leaves last week,...
August 5, 2020
In the sense that high-speed transmission lines connecting computerized boxes are the stock market, it’s boxes and lines. Also, stock exchange IEX, the investors exchange, hosts a podcast called Boxes and Lines that’s moderated by co-founder Ronan Ryan and John “JR” Ramsay, IEX’s chief...