Market Structure Insights
February 8, 2017
We’re in Steamboat Springs this week watching the moose on the snowbanks and letting the world slow down with them for a bit. It sets me to thinking. “Hedge funds would be better off doing nothing.” So postulated (requires subscription) Wall Street Journal writer Laurence...
February 1, 2017
If you want to be creeped out – and who doesn’t? – see the movie “Open Water.” It explains the problem with Board reports in investor-relations too. American director Chris Kentis based his 2003 film on real events. A couple go scuba-diving and are left...
January 25, 2017
“Our stock dropped because Citi downgraded us today.” So said the investor-relations chief for a technology firm last week during options-expirations. For thirty years, this has been the intonation of IR. “We’re moving on the Goldman upgrade.” “UBS lifted its target price, and shares are...
January 18, 2017
How many of you wear a Fitbit? I remember the last time I saw Jeff Morgan, erstwhile NIRI CEO. I said, “Jeff, you’ve lost weight. You’re a lean machine!” He tapped his wrist, and said, “Fitbit. You can appreciate it, Tim. It’s just measuring data,...
January 11, 2017
Last Sunday treated us to a picture-perfect Santa Monica day. We were there helping investor-relations folks at the NIRI Fundamentals conference understand the stock market. Of it, you probably won’t say to your CFO, “I bet you have no idea how our stock trades.” But...
January 4, 2017
I hit a nerve. What sparked the tempest was my assertion last week that investor-relations professionals can’t be just storytellers when over 80% of trading is not Active investment. (For you investors, it’s why stock-picking is performance-challenged.) It’s not that respondents raged against the machines...