Market Structure Insights
May 2, 2018
FactSet says quarterly earnings are up 23% from a year ago. Why have stocks declined? There’s an inclination to grasp at fundamental explanations. Yet stock pickers generally don’t reactively sell because most times they must be fully invested (meaning to sell, they must buy). Blackrock,...
April 25, 2018
Substitutes were responsible for yesterday’s market selloff. Remember back in school when you had substitute teachers? They were standing in for the real deal, no offense to substitutes. But did you maybe take them a little less seriously than the home room teacher? The market...
April 18, 2018
You can’t expect the stock market to reflect earnings. I’ll explain. By week’s end, 20% of the S&P 500 will have reported, and earnings are up 17% over the same period last year so far (normalized to about 7% sans federal corporate tax reform legislation)....
April 11, 2018
In 2016 to much fanfare, the SEC and the stock exchanges smashed a bottle of champagne on the looming bow of a tick-size study and launched that battleship into the markets. Two years later the tick study is limping into port in a lifeboat. For...
April 4, 2018
Spotify ditched convention yesterday with its direct listing on the NYSE. It didn’t raise money or ring the opening bell. It gave shareholders a way out. It’s a touchstone for the state of the capital markets. CrunchBase says Spotify has raised $2.6 billion in 22...
March 28, 2018
Recent market volatility is, we’re told, investors one day saying “let’s sell everything because of tariffs and a trade war” and two days later “let’s buy in epic fashion because the USA is negotiating with China.” That conforms market behavior to a fundamental explanation but...