Market Structure EDGE Blog
Market Structure EDGE Blog
Bare Windows
It’s window-dressing. That saying suggests effort to make something appear better than it is. And it’s a hallmark of stocks in today’s Relative Value era where the principal way we determine the worth of things is by comparing them to other things (true of...
Resistance and Support
http://modernir.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/MSM092221.mp3 Bucket-list seeing Colorado aspens in autumn. It will remind you that the planet is a living canvas and that everything is going to be okay. Colorado aspens at Muddy Pass summit. Karen Quast Now, what about...
Just Data
If stocks rise when VIX options expire, is it good or bad? It’s data. That, we know. If you’d never considered a relationship between stocks and options, welcome to market structure. It’s something every public company, investor, trader, should grasp. At...
Growth vs Value
http://modernir.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/MSM090821.mp3 Are you Value or Growth? Depends what we mean, I know. S&P Dow Jones says it distinguishes Value with “ratios of book value, earnings and sales to price.” It matters because Growth is terrorizing...
Gensler’s Gambit
http://modernir.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/MSM090121.mp3 Suddenly it’s September. Statistically, the worst month for stocks. Illustration 172906555 © Corneliakarl | Dreamstime.com It’s then no surprise that SEC Chair Gary Gensler would start hucking Molotovs...
Where’s It Going?
Where’s what going? Time? Hm. Money? Well. Yes. It abounds and yet it doesn’t go far. Why that’s the case is another story (I can explain if you like but it usually clears a room at a cocktail party). First, if you were spammed last week with the MSM,...
Suddenly
Illustration 179312099 / Ernest Hemingway © Lukaves | Dreamstime.com Things are getting worrisome. It’s not just our spectacular collapse in Afghanistan less than a month before the 20-year anniversary of Nine Eleven. That’s bad, yes. Inexcusable. It’s not the...
Starting Point
The starting point for good decisions is understanding what’s going on. I find it hard to believe you can know what’s going on when you’re authorizing trillions of dollars of spending. But I digress. Illustration 22981930 / Stock Trading © John Takai |...
Passive Pitfalls
We’re back! We relished upstate New York and Canandaigua Lake. If you’ve never been to Letchworth and Watkins Glen parks, put them on your list. See photo here from the former, the Upper Falls there. Alert reader Deb Pawlowski of Kei Advisors, a local resident,...
Optional Chaos
So which is it? Monday, doom loomed over stocks. In Punditry were wringing hands, hushed tones. The virus was back. Growth was slowing. Inflation. The sky was falling! Then came Tuesday. Jekyll and Hyde? Options expirations. Only CNBC’s Brian Sullivan mentioned...
Market Structure Basics
Roll Call
Apr 21, yesterday, is Texas A&M Aggie Muster. Aggies everywhere gather to say “here” for Aggies lost in the past year, a roll call. It’s more poignant this time for my Aggie, Karen, and the many friends and family hailing from College Station. Gig’em, Aggies....
Money for Nothing
How much does free money cost? Everything, apparently. The play Hamilton by Lin Manuel Miranda has grossed over $620 million, seventh all-time on Broadway but still a long way from Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, and Lion King, theater’s billion-dollar trio. Hamilton is...
Benjamin Graham
A decade ago today, stocks flash-crashed. I’m reminded that there are points of conventional market wisdom needing reconsideration. It’s not because wisdom has diminished. It’s because the market always reflects what the money is doing, and it’s not Ben Graham’s...
Reg Nemesis II
In the Colorado mountains at Steamboat Springs, the pixie dust florescence of greening aspen leaves paints spring onto the high country. In the bowels of equity markets there gurgles an emergent leviathan (maybe I should choose different imagery – but we’ll talk about...
What’s Changed
We’ve been pandemicking across the fruited plain and through the stock market for better than two months. Now what? I still rue my decision Friday Mar 13 to delay skiing in Steamboat till the next day (it was Fri the 13th after all). The next day the slopes closed for...
Blocking Volatility
The NYSE has proposed lowering the fee for trading to $0.10/100, or a tenth of a penny per share, or 10 mils. Did you know there’s a booming market where brokers routinely pay eight cents per share or $8.00/100 shares? What market? Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). We’re...
Rules and Money
There are two pillars to market intelligence: The Rules, and The Money. By market intelligence, I mean information about what’s pricing a stock. So, translating, information about what’s pricing a stock must derive from the rules that govern stock-trading, and how...
Ticking Down
In 2016 to much fanfare, the SEC and the stock exchanges smashed a bottle of champagne on the looming bow of a tick-size study and launched that battleship into the markets. Two years later the tick study is limping to port in a lifeboat. For those of you thinking...
Streaming Market
Spotify ditched convention 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 raised $2.6 billion in 22 funding...
Auctioning Profits
What’s the closing auction worth? A member of the investor-relations profession last week posted a story for community discussion on a CBOE BATS proposal to open day-end auctions to exchanges that don’t have listings. (Editorial note: The SEC has now approved the BATS...