Market Structure Insights

December 24, 2014

As Christmas Eve arrives in the US, market-structure circles are abuzz on tidings from Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), parent of the NYSE, about bold market reform. Is it the birth of opportunity or a winter fable? In case you missed it, word broke last week that ICE...

December 17, 2014

Volatility derivatives expire today as the Federal Reserve gives monetary guidance. How would you like to be in those shoes? Oh but if you’ve chosen investor-relations as your profession, you’re in them. Management wants to know why holders are selling when oil – or pick your...

December 10, 2014

Suppose you were an elevator operator. In 2013, the conservative Weekly Standard reported that the most senior member of the Senatorial coterie of button-pushers on the Hill pocketed about $210,000 in compensation, on par with investor-relations professionals. The elevators have been automated in the Capitol...

December 3, 2014

Euclid could have been a hedge-fund manager. The Greek mathematician and father of differential geometry defined our understanding of three-dimensional shapes in roughly 280 BC. Thanks to Euclid we know what a cube is, and that right angles are all equal. In 1982, mathematician James...

November 26, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving from Austin, TX!  Many of you are out too, seeing family for the holiday. Looking back at 2014, this Market Structure Map from Aug 27 was one of the year’s most widely read. Curiously, some of the same economic data points including the FHFA house-price...

November 19, 2014

You’ve got to know what to measure. Every time I interact with anybody from an airline to my company’s communications providers, I get a survey. “How’d we do?” It drives me crazy. It’s like Claymation customer service:  Move something, take a picture.  Move something, take...

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