The Market Structure Map

April 1, 2020

DoubleLine’s famed Jeff Gundlach says we’ll take out March lows in stocks because the market is dysfunctional. Karen and I have money at DoubleLine through managed accounts with advisors. Mr. Gundlach is a smart man. Maybe it’s splitting hairs if I say the stock market...

March 25, 2020

All 20 biggest points-losses for Dow Jones Industrials (DJIA) stocks in history have occurred under Regulation National Market System. And 18 occurred from 2018-2020. Fifteen of the 20 biggest points-gains are in the last two years too, with all save one, in Mar 2000, under...

March 18, 2020

In crises I think of Winston Churchill who said, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Let’s start now with lessons from a health crisis that became a market...

March 13, 2020

My email inbox took such a fusillade of stock volatility halts yesterday that I set two rules to sort them automatically. Emails rained in well after the close, girders triggered hours before and stuck in an overwhelmed system. As I write, volatility halts Mon-Thu this...

March 11, 2020

We’ve written of risks in stocks from proliferating Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). We’ve talked long about liquidity risks, here last October with CNBC’s Brian Sullivan. So what, right? The market has functioned well in this Coronavirus Pandemonium, argue regulators and reporters (WSJ subscription required). What’s...

March 4, 2020

I fear the Coronavirus may cause us to miss the real clanging claxon the past two weeks: The stock market cannot handle any form of truth. The viral threat is market structure. That the market plummeted on yesterday’s surprise (shocking) Federal Reserve rate-cut, the first...

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