Market Structure Insights
November 29, 2017
In the past week as stocks jetpacked higher, Passive Investment was 36% of trading volume. The data counter a message Passive managers like Blackrock are propagating: We don’t trade, we just follow stock-pickers. That’s not just untrue. It contradicts basic facts. Let me explain using...
November 22, 2017
About 60% of US trading takes place on stock exchanges, the other 40% in private broker-operated markets. Should you be worried that nearly half of trading isn’t transparent? It’s Thanksgiving week so there’s no need for worry! We’re in Vail marking the occasion because everything...
November 15, 2017
We’re in New York this week while companies gather in Dallas for the annual NAREIT conference, the association for real estate investment trusts. Real estate is about 3% of the S&P 500. By comparison, Technology is 23%, the largest by a wide margin over healthcare...
November 8, 2017
We’re in San Francisco at the NIRI meeting, warming up with winter coming to Denver and as summer carries airily on in stocks. What metrics do you use to evaluate your own shares, investor-relations folks, or ones you own, investors? I don’t mean fundamentals like...
November 1, 2017
Keep it between the lines, advises an old country song from my youth. “Quast,” you say. “If it’s from your youth, drop the modifier ‘old.’ That’s a given.” You’d be right. Yesterday was ghoulish, as my Halloween trick was turning 50. Dead in the middle...
October 25, 2017
It’s been so easy making money on stocks around the planet that the actual easy money has been forgotten. The European Central Bank Thursday is expected to signal intent to curtail long-running mass purchases of corporate debt. Of course the Federal Reserve, the American central...