Karen and I are in Playa del Carmen, having left the US after the Trump election.
Just kidding! We’re celebrating…Karen’s 50th birthday first here on the lovely beaches of Quintana Roo and next in New York where we go often but never for fun. This time, no work and all play.
Speaking of work, Brian Leite, head of client services, circulated a story to the team about Carl Icahn’s election-night buys. Futures were plunging as Mrs. Clinton’s path to victory narrowed. Mr. Icahn bought.
If you’ve got a billion dollars you can most times make money. You’d buy the cheapest sector options and futures and aim your billion at a handful of, say, small-cap banks in a giant SEC tick-size study that are likely to move up rapidly. Chase them until your financial-sector futures are in the money. Cash out. See, easy.
(Editorial observation: It might be argued the tick study exacerbated volatility – it’s heavily concentrated in Nasdaq stocks and that market has been more volatile. It might also be argued that low spreads rob investors of returns and pay them to traders instead.)
If you’re big you can buy and sell the future anytime. The market last week roared on strength for financials, industrials, defense and other parts of the market thought to benefit from an unshackled Trump economy.
An aside: In Denver, don’t miss my good friend Rich Barry tomorrow at NIRI on the market post-election (Rich, we’ll have a margarita for you in Old Mexico).
We track the four main reasons investors and traders buy or sell, dividing market volume among these central tendencies. Folks buy or sell stocks for their unique features (stock picking), because they’re like other stocks (asset allocation), to profit on price-differences (fast trading) and to protect or leverage trades and portfolios (risk management).
Fast trading led and inversely correlated with risk-management. It was a leveraged, speculative rally. Traders profited by trafficking short-term in people’s long-term expectations (there was a Reagan boom but it followed a tough first eighteen Reagan months that were consequences of things done long before he arrived).
Traders buy the future in the form of rights and sell it long before the future arrives, so that by the time it does the future isn’t what it used to be.
They’re grabbing in days the implied profits from a rebounding future that must unfold over months or even years. Contrast with stock-pickers and public companies. Both pursue long arcs requiring time and patience.
Aside: ModernIR and NIRI will host an incredible but true expose with Joe Saluzzi of Themis Trading and Mett Kinak of T Rowe Price Dec 1 on how big investors buy and sell stocks today.
Why does the market favor trading the future in the present? It’s “time-priority,” meaning the fastest – the least patient – must by rule set the price of stocks, the underlying assets. We could mount a Trump-size sign over the market: Arbitrage Here.
We’re told low spreads are good for investors. No, wide spreads assign value to time. Low spreads benefit anyone wanting to leave fast. Low spreads encourage profiting on price-differences – which is high-frequency trading.
Long has the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig written that patience is an investing virtue. Last weekend’s column asked if we have the stamina to be wealthy, the clear implication being that time is our friend.
Yet market structure is the enemy of patience. Options expire today through Friday. The present value of the future lapses. With the future spent, we may give back this surge long before the Trump presidency begins, even by Thanksgiving.
I like to compare markets and monetary policy. Consider interest rates. High rates require commitment. Low borrowing costs encourage leverage for short-term opportunities. We’ve got things backward in money and the markets alike. Time is not our friend.
Upshot? The country is in a mood to question assumptions. We could put aside differences and agree to quit selling the future to fast traders. Stop making low spreads and high speed key tenets of a market meant to promote time and patience – the future.
