Market Structure EDGE Blog
Market Structure EDGE Blog
Blunderbuss
Do stores sell coats in the summer? No, they sell bathing suits. They match product to consumer. Do you, investor-relations professionals? I’ll tell you what I mean. First, here’s a tease: I recorded a panel yesterday with the Nasdaq’s Chris Anselmo and Kissell...
Rewards of Risk
Investor relations involves risk. And that’s good. Don’t you mean investing involves risk, Tim? And why is it good? Well, yes, investing is a risky endeavor. But I mean the role of “investor relations,” the liaison to Wall Street at public companies, requires taking...
Characteristic Opportunity
I don’t think Harvard Business Review understands 21st century investor relations. No offense to the smart folks there. Authors Dennis Carey, Ram Charan and Bill McNabb are world-renowned and wrote for HBR on the Changing Role of the Investor Relations Officer. It’s...
Your Umbrella
Leaving South Carolina is hard. It’s captivating. We had not a bad meal from Savannah to Pawleys Beach. Perfect weather (the surprising part). But always know where your umbrella is. And thanks to Steve Hufford at Blackbaud for the tip about the Angel Oak Tree south...
Something Wicked
When I was a kid I read Ray Bradbury’s novel, Something Wicked this Way Comes, which plays on our latent fear of caricature. It takes the entertaining thing, a traveling carnival, and turns it into 1962-style horror. Not 2021-style of course. There’s decorum. It stars...
Roped Together
This Cinco de Mayo we’re grateful for tequila. Especially if you’re a Tech investor. Why are companies crushing earnings and revenue being pulverized by an imperious market? It’s easiest to say expectations for the future have diminished and so market capitalization...
Message vs Messages
It’s earnings season. Across the market, companies beat expectations and lift guidance and stocks decline. Huh? I can offer a broad array of cases. Take TSLA. Massive quarter, monstrous boost to forward views. Stock declines. And yes, I Tweeted before TSLA...
Swapping Volatility
Google chose as motto “don’t be evil.” “Beware derivatives” isn’t a bad motto either. If you’ve read the MSM long, you know we’ve beaten the drum like Boneshaker (when you hear the sound of the drum, here we come) over the risk in derivatives. Oh please, Quast. Can’t...
Which Way
http://modernir.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MSM041421.mp3 In Lake Jackson, TX, you can take This Way or That Way. No, really. I snapped that shot Friday at the corner of This Way and That Way in LJ. And yes, that rhymes. And yes, it’s a metaphor for the stock...
Fama Market
http://modernir.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MSM040721.mp3 Eugene Fama, Booth School, Univ of Chicago Do you know traders could have made 580% in the S&P 500 the past 200 days? Public companies, your stock need not rise. I’ll explain. The S&P 500 is...
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...