Market Structure Insights

dreamstime m 99921172
April 10, 2024

You wonder what’s going to happen next. I mean, look around. The South Carolina women ran ruthlessly through everyone, capping a 38-0 season with the NCAA basketball championship. Right before a total eclipse not of the heart but of the sun. Then UConn trammeled the...

dreamstime l 27136185
April 3, 2024

Is impending volatility predictable? Sherlock Holmes would not tell Watson it’s elementary, that’s for sure. But there is a tale behind the tape. Permit me to tell it. I wrote this last week: Some volatility you can’t control. The market is fragile and fast-moving and...

dreamstime m 105967603
March 27, 2024

Vanguard founder Jack Bogle said to own the averages. Index funds. That seed germinated into a tree that filled the investment world. Look at Blackrock. More on Larry Fink in a moment. Most of the top 25 owners of US stocks follow models. The constituency...

dreamstime m 66699772
March 6, 2024

What the…? Everything was awesome. Monday. Then yesterday, stocks toppled like a thawed corpse in Nederland (inside joke, there). No obvious reason. Some said it was Jay Powell testifying today and tomorrow. Others claimed it was Big Tech coming apart at the seams (great song...

dreamstime l 67819586
February 28, 2024

Two things exploded in 2023. Trading in options contracts and illegal US immigration. No, I’m not suggesting they’re correlated! I note it bemusedly. But I do have a point. We need clarity. In options, the Futures Industry Association said equity-linked instruments saw volume double globally...

dreamstime m 212403964
February 7, 2024

On Nov 15, 2021, NVDA closed at $345.30 on a hundred million shares of volume. Without context, that information is interesting but unhelpful. I’d note it was a monthly options-expirations date (those are bigger than ever for hedging, and routinely we find that Activist swaps...

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