As the market fell yesterday like a dragon from the sky (Game of Throners, the data are not good on dragon longevity now), 343 companies reported results, 10% of all firms.
Market fireworks were blamed yet again on tariff fears. Every tantrum is the Fed or tariffs it seems, even with hundreds publishing earnings. What happened to the idea that results drive markets?
Speaking of data, on May 6, the market first plunged like a bungee jumper off a bridge – and then caromed back up to a nonevent.
Behind the move, 21% of companies had new Rational Prices – Active money leading other behaviors and buying. That’s more than twice the year-long average of about 9% and the third-highest mark over the entire past year.
Talk about buying the dip. Smart money doesn’t see tariffs as threats to US interests (and likes the economic outlook, and likes corporate financial results). We’ve been using them to fund government since the Hamilton Tariffs of 1789.
So if not tariffs, why did stocks fall?
Before I tell you what the data show: Come to the NIRI Annual Conference, friends and colleagues. I’m moderating a panel the first day featuring hedge-fund legend Lee Cooperman, market-structure expert and commentator Joe Saluzzi, and SEC head of Trading and Markets Brett Redfearn.
We’ll talk about the good and bad in market-evolution the past 50 years and what’s vital to know now. Sign up here.
IR folks, you’re the chief intelligence officer for capital markets. Your job is more than telling the story. It’s time to lead your executive team and board to better understand the realities driving your equity value, from Exchange Traded Funds to shorting and event-driven trends. It’s how we remain relevant.
Before you report results, you should know what the money that’s about you, your story, your results, your strategy, is doing – and what the rest of it is doing too.
Take LYFT, which reported yesterday for the first time. Just 8% of LYFT volume is from Active Investment. By contrast about 22% is quantitative event-driven money, and over 58% is fast machines trading the tick. The balance ties to derivatives.
From that data, one can accurately extrapolate probable outcomes (ask us for your Market Expectation, or LYFT’s, and we’ll show you).
Every IR team should be arming its board and executives with a view of all the money, not just musing on how core holders may react – which is generally not at all.
And investors, if you’re focused only on fundamentals without respect to market structure, you’ll get burned. I can rattle off a long list of companies beating and raising whose shares fell. The reasons aren’t rational but arbitrage-driven.
Having kept you in the dark like a Game of Thrones episode, let’s throw light on the data behind the late equity swoon: Always follow the money (most in financial media are not).
ETFs are 50% of market volume. There have been $1.4 trillion (estimating for Apr and May) of ETF shares created and redeemed in 2019 already.
ETF shares are collateralized with stocks, but ETFs do not pool investor assets to buy stocks. In exchange for tax-free collateral, they trade to brokers the right to create ETF shares to sell to investors. The collateral is baskets of stocks – that they own outright.
The motivation, the profit opportunity, for that collateral has got nothing to do with tariffs or earnings or the economy. It’s more like flipping houses.
An Invesco PowerShares rep quipped to one of our team, “You see that coffee cup? I’d take that as collateral if I could flip it for a penny.”
ETF sponsors and brokers in very short cycles flip ETF shares and collateral. As with real estate where it works
Tech Sector Composite Stocks — Behavioral Data
great until houses start to fall in value, the market craters when all the parties chasing collateral try to get out at once (and it happens suddenly).
ETF patterns for the top year-to-date sector, Tech, are elongated way beyond normal parameters (same for two of three other best YTD sectors). It suggests ETFs shares have been increasing without corresponding rises in collateral.
With the market faltering, there’s a dash to the door to profit on collateral before the value vanishes. One thing can trigger it. A tweet? Only if a move down in stocks threatens to incinerate – like a dragon – the value of collateral.
How important is that for IR teams, boards, executives and investors to understand?
