The Market Structure Map
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...
January 29, 2025
DeepSeek would be a great name for a rock band. As would Rapeseed, an alternative offered by the helpful Whole Foods staff when I asked for canola oil. Canola so far as I know is unrelated to Nvidia, which is in 756 Exchange Traded Funds....
January 8, 2025
We were in Nashville and Keith Urban wished us a happy new year. If you like country music, that’s a good start to 2025. More on that in a moment. It was December 18 when I last wrote. I talked then about how the market...
December 18, 2024
Willie Nelson plays Johnny Dean in the 1997 Barry Levinson movie Wag the Dog, who is hired to write a patriotic song as part of a fake war designed to divert public attention. I don’t recall it but Microsoft Copilot tells me the character struggles...