Market Structure Insights

September 7, 2016

Last week US jobs were weak and the market welcomed the news. We tend to laugh or snort when stocks do the opposite of what they should. But if the market is powered by an economy that’s weaker than expected, why should it rise? And...

August 31, 2016

Last week a stock strategist said passive investment is worse than Marxism. That’s a way to get attention at risk of offending Marxists. It did (get attention). CNBC covered it. Jason Zweig did too in the Wall Street Journal weekend edition. It’s relevant to investor...

August 24, 2016

In Luckenbach, Texas, ain’t nobody feeling no pain. We were just there and I think the reason is the bar out the back of the post office. A country song by that name about this place released in 1977 by Waylon Jennings begins by asserting...

August 17, 2016

What keeps stocks going is low volatility. By seeking only to earn the spread on each transaction and not bet on the direction of markets, you can make money close to 50 percent of the time. This one sentence from a profile of high-speed firm...

August 10, 2016

Alert reader Raj Mehan at Steelcase forwarded a piece from the Wall Street Journal about traders now aiming with machines to execute stock-market transactions near light-speed. Why the rush? Companies take flak for “short-termism” that’s a quarter long and yet regulators and traders and academics...

August 3, 2016

I was high-frequency traded by a travel site. Had that happen? You web-search a place and pricing and there’s no availability for the date you want so you check elsewhere and suddenly there’s vacancy – but now it costs more so you better act fast!...

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