Blackrock CEO Larry Fink sees risk of a melt-up, not a meltdown for stocks.

Speaking of market structure, I’m a vice chair for NIRI’s Annual Conference – the 50th anniversary edition.  From the opening general session, to meeting the hedge funds, to a debate on how ETFs work, we’ve included market structure.  Catch a preview webcast on So-So Thursday, Apr 18, (before Good Friday) at 2pm ET (allow time to download Adobe Connect): https://niri.adobeconnect.com/webinar041819

Back to Larry Fink, is he right?  Who knows. But Blackrock wants to nudge record sidelined retail and institutional cash into stocks because revenues declined 7%.

Data tell us the market doesn’t need more buyers to melt up. Lipper said $20 billion left US equities from Jan through Apr 3, more than the $6 billion Bloomberg had earlier estimated. Stocks rallied 16%.

We wrote April 3 that no net cash fled equities in Q4 last year when the market corrected. If stocks can plunge when no money leaves and soar when it does, investors and public companies should be wary of rational expectations.

We teach public companies to watch for behavioral data outside norms.  Investors, you should be doing the same. Behavioral-change precedes price-change.  It can be fleeting, like a hand shoved in a bucket of water. Look away and you’ll miss the splash.

Often there’s no headline or economic factor because behaviors are in large part motivated by characteristics, not fundamentals.

Contrast with what legendary value investor Benjamin Graham taught us in Security Analysis (1934) and The Intelligent Investor (1949): Buy stocks discounted to assets and limit your risk.

The market is now packed with behaviors treating stocks as collateral and chasing price-differences. It’s the opposite of the Mr. Market of the Intelligent Investor. If we’re still thinking the same way, we’ll be wrong.

When the Communication Services sector arose from Technology and Consumer Discretionary stocks last September, the pattern of disruption was shocking. Unless you saw it (Figure 1), you’d never have known markets could roll over.

Larry Fink may think money should rush in (refrains of “fools rush in…”) because interest rates are low.  Alan Greenspan told CNBC last week there’s a “stock market aura” in which a 10% rise in stocks corresponds to a 1% increase in GDP. Stocks were down 18% in Q4, and have rebounded about 16%. Is the GDP impact then neutral?

To me, the great lesson for public companies and investors is the market’s breakdown as a barometer for fundamentals.  We’ve written why. Much of the volume driving equities now reacts to spreads – price-differences.

In a recent year, SPY, the world’s largest and oldest Exchange Traded Fund, traded at a premium to net asset value 62% of the time and a discount 38% of the time. Was it 2017 when stocks soared?  No, it was 2018 when SPY declined 4.5%.

Note how big changes in behavioral patterns correspond with market moves. The one in September is eye-popping. Patterns now are down as much as up and could signal a top.

SPY trades 93% of the time within 25 basis points of NAV, but it effectively never trades AT net-asset-value. Comparing trading volume to creations and redemptions of ETF shares, the data suggest 96% of SPY trading is arbitrage, profiting on price-differences.

This is the stuff that’s invaded the equity market like a Genghis Kahn horde trampling principles of value investment and distorting prices.

So, what do we DO, investors and public companies?

Recognize that the market isn’t a reliable barometer for rational thought. If your stock fell 40% in Q4 2018 and rebounded 38% in Q1, the gain should be as suspect as the fall.

Ask why. Ask your exchange. Ask the regulators. Ask the business reporters. These people should be getting to the bottom of vanishing rationality in stocks.

It may be the market now is telling us nothing more than ETFs are closing above net asset value and ETF market-makers are melting stocks up to close that gap.  That could be true 62% of the time, and the market could still lose 20% in two weeks.

When you hear market-behavior described in rational terms – even during earnings – toss some salt over a shoulder.  I think the market today comes down to three items: Sentiment reflecting how machines set prices, shorting, and behavioral change.

Behavioral patterns in stocks now show the biggest declines since September. Sentiment reflecting how machines set prices is topped ahead of options expirations that’ll be truncated by Good Friday. Shorting bottomed last week and is rising.

(Side note: patterns don’t vary during earnings. They fluctuate at month-ends, quarter-ends and options-expirations, so these are more powerful than results.)

Nobody knows the future and we don’t either. Behaviors change. But the present is dominated by characteristics, powerful factors behind behavioral patterns.