FactSet says quarterly earnings are up 23% from a year ago. Why have stocks declined? There’s an inclination to grasp at fundamental explanations. Yet stock pickers generally don’t reactively sell because most times they must be fully invested (meaning to…
View pageYou can’t expect the stock market to reflect earnings. I’ll explain. By week’s end, 20% of the S&P 500 will have reported, and earnings are up 17% over the same period last year so far (normalized to about 7% sans…
View pageSpotify ditched convention yesterday with its direct listing on the NYSE. It didn’t raise money or ring the opening bell. It gave shareholders a way out. It’s a touchstone for the state of the capital markets. CrunchBase says Spotify has…
View pageRecent market volatility is, we’re told, investors one day saying “let’s sell everything because of tariffs and a trade war” and two days later “let’s buy in epic fashion because the USA is negotiating with China.” That conforms market behavior…
View pageJakob Dylan (he of Pulitzer lineage) claimed on the Red Letter Days album by the Wallflowers that there are three ways out of every box. Warning: Listen to the song at your own risk. It will get in your head…
View pageOur good friends at Themis Trading wrote last week about a $14 million settlement between the NYSE and the SEC over a series of violations. Why care, issuers and investors? Suppose nobody told you the road you take daily to…
View pageI can’t find a team (men’s or women’s) headed to March Madness, the annual collegiate sports fete in the USA, wearing green and purple. But the market’s awash in them. Don’t you mean red and green, Tim? Buy and selling?…
View page“It’s like the market has become some uncontrollable machine lurching around,” said friend Pat at the NIRI Rocky Mountain chapter meeting last week. I spoke there about Exchange Traded Funds and how they contribute to market instability through the slow…
View pageWho remembers EF Hutton? When EF Hutton talks, people listen. That slogan crafted by Hutton’s William Clayton, who died in 2013, and now-defunct advertising agency Benton & Bowles, wasn’t about a man but a firm. Ads ran in the 70s…
View pageOne definition of “volatile” is “passing off readily in the form of vapor.” Through yesterday, XIV, the exchange-traded security representing a one-day swap from Credit Suisse and offered by VelocityShares, had seen 94% of its value vaporized. It triggered a…
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