The Market Structure Map
April 16, 2025
Big banks reported this week, posting record first-quarter trading profits. Buy-and-hold money didn’t drive them. We’re told by financial advisors not to trade. Buy, and hold. Don’t time the market. Sell to avoid downside and you’ll miss the market’s biggest rebounds, say the statistics. Yet...
April 9, 2025
As one of our team said, “The Quast Vacation Put strikes again.” Wearing puka shells and vacation pants, we split March 25 for the trade winds of St Vincent and the Grenadines to sail the following seas. And the stock market crumbled. You can see...
March 26, 2025
Long ago, I saw a band called Mars Volta, which opened for Incubus in Sacramento. Boy, I’ve dated myself now. Incubus was awesome, Brandon Boyd writhing on the stage and telling us to take the wheel and drive. Mars Volta couldn’t finish a song. So...
March 19, 2025
I’ll give you a high statistical probability. The stock market this week won’t reflect “fundamentals.” Quast, you’re obsessed with your own view that the market is quantitative. No, it’s what we call “context.” The cadence and calendar of the market: Yet whatever the stock market...
March 12, 2025
In Clint Eastwood’s 1992 movie Unforgiven, the scrolling script claims his character William Munny is of “notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.” Rather like the stock market. A theme of the movie is: What you were may revisit you. Same in the stock market. And the...
March 5, 2025
Tariffs don’t just – boom! Rock the market. There must be a condition precedent. We’ve seen it before with the Federal Reserve. The Fed says, “We’re hiking rates.” Stocks crater. But behind the scenes, money had already moved. It happened in late 2021. I made...