What’s actionable?
It’s a buzzword of business and the investor-relations profession. And, yes, my title violates a rule of grammar because you can’t tell if the topic is a hoax about actionability or if a hoax out there has proved actionable.
We’ll answer using the market. Like this: Trade-war threats are wrecking markets! Right?
Wrong. Pundits tying moves in the market to headlines don’t understand market structure. Suppose you’re getting “actionable” information from pundits who don’t know how the market works. Are the recommended actions reliable?
While you ponder that, consider this: If trade concerns for tech stocks caused the correction in February, why did the Nasdaq hit an all-time high June 20? Did the same money that rejected the market back then on trade fears three months later without resolution to those concerns pay more?
You can say, “No, they were sellers.” Okay, so who bought?
Market experts are often offering actionable intelligence based on outdated ideas. But they have a duty to understand how the market works and what the money is doing.
In fact, these two pillars – how the market works, what the money is doing – should be the bedrock for understanding markets.
What’s the money doing? It’s not choosing to be directed by rational thought. We know because a vast sea of data on fund flows tells us so. If we as investors or investor-relations practitioners continue doing what we did before fund flows surged to passive money, who is the bigger fool?
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are driving 50% of market volume now. They are passive vehicles. But they uniquely among investment products permit ETF creators like Blackrock and Vanguard a step-up in tax basis through creation and redemption.
How? Say NFLX is up 100% in three months, imputing tax costs to ETF shares. Creators of ETFs collateralized by NFLX shares will put it in redemption baskets exchanged to brokers for returned ETF shares. (NOTE: If you don’t know how ETFs work, ask us for our ETF whitepaper.) NFLX then plunges as brokers sell and short it.
Five days later, the ETF creator can bring NFLX back now in a creation basket of new ETF shares that it will issue only in exchange for NFLX – laundered of tax consequences.
Apply this to the Technology sector (or the whole market for that matter). We just had Russell index rebalances, and Technology is a big part of market cap. S&P indices rebalanced June 22 and Technology is over 25% of the S&P 500 now.
This week is quarter-end window-dressing. ETFs are trying to bleed taxes off runups in Tech stocks. We could see it coming in Sentiment by June 14, when it topped, signaling downside, and when behavioral volatility indicated big price-swings. Data say we have another rough day coming this week.
Headlines may help prioritize what gets tax-washed, so to speak, but the motivation is not investment. It’s aiming at picking gains and packing off tax consequences.
The market is driven far more by these factors than rational thought, which we know by studying the data. ETF creations and redemptions are hundreds of billions of dollars monthly. Inflows and outflows from buy-and-hold funds are nonexistent by comparison.
Ergo, it can’t be rational thought driving the market no matter the talking heads declaiming trade threats.
It’s what lawyers call a “fact pattern.” ETFs dominate passive investment, drive 50% of market volume, depend on tax efficiency, which process is an arbitrage trade that involves a continual shift of hundreds of billions monthly in underlying assets, and a corresponding continual shift in collateralizing assets called stocks – with market-makers profiting, and ETF creators profiting – without regard to market direction.
It’s poor fodder for a 24-hour news cycle. But it explains market behavior. Moves have become more pronounced because money stopped pouring into US equities via ETFs this year. Volatility exploded because getting tax efficiency got harder.
Which brings us to the “actionable” hoax. The word “actionable” says consumers of products or services are fixated on a prompt, a push, an imprimatur.
Fine. But flinging the word around causes investors and IR professionals to miss what matters more, and first. Investors and public companies should be asking: “How does this service or that tool help me understand what the money behind stocks is doing?”
Ask your service provider to explain how your stock trades. Then ask us to explain it.
If they don’t match, ask why. The beginning point of correct action is an understanding of what you can and cannot control, and how the environment in which you operate works.
Take the weather. We can’t control it. But it determines the viability of our actions. The same applies to understanding market structure. It determines the viability of actions.
If you want to learn market structure, ask us how, IR professionals and investors. It’s the starting point. What you think is actionable may be a hoax. Compare how the market works to what you’re doing. Do they match? If not, change your actions. We’ll help you.
