The Market Structure Map
December 9, 2015
Looking around at the market, we decided the only thing to do is go to St. Maarten. Safely at sea, we’ll wait out options-expirations and the Fed meeting next week and return Dec 21 to tell you what we saw from afar. What’s up close...
December 2, 2015
I looked back at what we wrote Dec 2, 2008. It was two weeks before Madoff (pronounced “made off” we’d observed bemusedly) became synonymous with fraud. Markets were approaching ramming speed into the Mar 2009 financial-crisis nadir. In that environment on this date then, we...
November 25, 2015
A war of words is unfolding in our profession. In case you’ve not followed, it’s about the market for the product you manage as investor-relations officers. Many of you have read Flash Boys, Michael Lewis’s (The Big Short is soon coming to movie screens) engaging...
November 18, 2015
If the stock market reflects all information currently known, why are buyout deals nearly always done at a premium to market price? “Because, Quast, deals involve proprietary pricing models that account for synergies.” Sure. But I want you to think about prices. The Wall Street...
November 11, 2015
Algorithmic trading is Wall Street’s last best hope. So said the lead sentence in a story called Algo Wars in the May 30, 2005 edition of Investment Dealer’s Digest. That publication is gone and so is Lehman Brothers, co-leader of program-trading at the NYSE in...
November 4, 2015
Why are stocks rising if earnings and revenues are falling? FactSet’s latest Earnings Insight with 70% of the S&P 500 reporting says earnings are down 2.2% versus the third quarter last year, revenues off 2.9%. Yardeni Reseach Inc. shows a massive stock-disconnect with global growth....