Market Structure Insights

March 7, 2018

I can’t find a team (men’s or women’s) headed to March Madness, the annual collegiate sports fete in the USA, wearing green and purple. But the market’s awash in them. Don’t you mean red and green, Tim? Buy and selling? No, green and purple. See...

February 28, 2018

“It’s like the market has become some uncontrollable machine lurching around,” said friend Pat at the NIRI Rocky Mountain chapter meeting last week. I spoke there about Exchange Traded Funds and how they contribute to market instability through the slow adjustment of collateral for creating...

February 21, 2018

Who remembers EF Hutton? When EF Hutton talks, people listen. That slogan crafted by Hutton’s William Clayton, who died in 2013, and now-defunct advertising agency Benton & Bowles, wasn’t about a man but a firm. Ads ran in the 70s and 80s where characters would...

February 14, 2018

The market’s Valentine’s Day gift is VIX expirations today. It might be no more than a flirtatious glance toward investors but there’s reason for wariness. It kicks off the February series of expirations for derivatives today through Friday, with then a market holiday next Monday,...

February 7, 2018

One definition of “volatile” is “passing off readily in the form of vapor.” Through yesterday, XIV, the exchange-traded security representing a one-day swap from Credit Suisse and offered by VelocityShares, had seen 94% of its value vaporized. It triggered a technical provision in the fund’s...

January 31, 2018

We interrupt the white-hot arc of the stock market for this public-service announcement: Watch the dollar. While any number of factors might be selected as reason for the DJIA’s 360-point drop yesterday, one macro factor correlates well: The relative buying power of the US...

Want to know your Passive characteristics? How to rethink your earnings reporting cycle?