Market Structure Insights
January 8, 2014
Happy New Year! Hope you spent the two-week break from these pages joyfully. We’ve descended this week from the high Denver backbone of the continent to visit west in Santa Monica and sponsor NIRI’s Fundamentals of IR program. Following our New York trip before Christmas,...
December 18, 2013
Is the Federal Reserve fueling stock-market gains? When St. Louis Fed president James Bullard addressed the Bowling Green, KY, Chamber of Commerce in February 2011, he pinpointed correlation between Ben Bernanke’s September 2010 Jackson Hole speech on “QE2,” the Fed’s second easy-money program, and the...
December 11, 2013
Do retail investors matter? Depends what you mean. They’re important and valuable as investors. I once headed investor relations for a company with thousands of retail holders. I was president of an IR services firm that focused on retail-targeting strategies. But when people ask me...
December 4, 2013
I’m reminded of a joke (groans). A man is sent to prison. As he settles into his captive routine he’s struck by a midafternoon affair among his jailed fellows. One would shout out, “Number 4!” The others would laugh. His cellmate, seeing the newbie’s consternation,...
November 27, 2013
Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s a phrase Karen’s grandmother coined that you may find useful this time of year: “We ate to dullness.” Since many of you are appropriately absent this week from the IR chair (or whichever office you occupy), we’ll revisit past turf. Among the...
November 20, 2013
In the timeless 1987 movie The Princess Bride, Vizzini the Sicilian, played riotously with a lisp by Wallace Shawn, keeps declaring things “inconceivable!” Swordsman Inigo Montoya, portrayed then by Homeland’s Mandy Patinkin, finally says, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means...