The Market Structure Map
July 30, 2025
Tell them it’s human nature, sang Jacob Collier. Well, Michael Jackson crooned that in 1982 under the tutelage of Quincy Jones. At the Denver Botanic Gardens Jul 28, musical savant Jacob Collier who Quincy Jones championed played Michael Jackson’s Human Nature with technological wizardry that...
June 25, 2025
There’s an air of inevitability in the stock market. We have wars and rumors of wars and stocks rise, and then a ceasefire and stocks skyrocket. It’s nice in the sense that a relentlessly yeasty market creates wealth. Moviemaker Stanley Kubrick recrafted Peter George’s 1958...
June 18, 2025
I wanted to call the blog “Frenzied Pursuit” because I thought it was not only a great name for a rock band but an excellent title. Alas, Greg Zuckerman at the Wall Street Journal had already used it. I’ve long recommended Greg’s book “The Man...
June 11, 2025
In what I believe to be a first, we have a client whose largest shareholder is a proprietary trader. And the position is comprised of put and call options. The firm, Jane Street, is the largest market-maker in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Proprietary traders like...
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...
January 22, 2025
A headline at Bloomberg from Jan 13, 2025, reads: I was a Wall Street Analyst. They are Irrelevant. The article by opinion columnist Shuli Ren (subscription required), a former sellsider, describes factors reducing the value of sellside research. It’s one of three in a span...