Happy New Year! If the holidays this year seemed sweeter, the air more welcome to the well-caroled note, it’s probably because I’ve been quiet for two straight weeks.

And with good reason. The lovely KQ and I winged southward with fellow wayfarers for time over the keel on the cayes and reefs of Belize. At Queens Cayes east off Placencia past the wildlife preserve at Laughing Bird Caye, we found what one friend called “your own Corona commercial.” As the sun faded toward dusk there, we caught this grand view of our boats on Dec 11. Our companions below the surface included this delightful fellow, a spotted eagle ray. The Eagle Ray Club is a good name for a rock band. Continue reading →

Say you were playing poker.

I don’t mean gambling, but real cards. You’re engaged with some seriousness. You’re watching how you bet and when, reading the players ahead and after you.

Then The House starts doling out stacks of chips. Would you play more or less cautiously if you had free chips?

Apply this thinking to equity markets, IR folks. In trading data, we saw European money sweeping into US equities Nov 28. Why did markets trembling Nov 25 decide by the following Monday to up the ante in risk-taking? Primary dealers implementing policy for global central banks also drive most program-trading strategies.

Thus, European money surmised that central banks would intervene, and their behavior reflected it. The rest caught on, and markets soared Nov 30 on free chips from central banks. It was short-lived. By Dec 2, we saw institutions market-wide assaying portfolio risk and locking in higher derivatives insurance. The chips were gone.

Money sat back expectantly. On Dec 8, The House delivered chips as the European Central Bank lowered interest rates. That’s devaluing the euro. At first, cheapening the euro increases the value of the dollar – which lowers US stocks (a la Dec 8). But if you’d hedged with derivatives as most of the globe did, you bluffed The House. Plus, the Fed will likely have to follow Europe’s bet up with a see-and-raise to devalue the dollar back into line with the euro (expect it next week, but before options expirations).

In poker, having “the nuts” is holding the best cards, and knowing it. Central banks have given arbitragers the nuts. Continue reading →

If you think “tail risk” is what happens if you grab a cat by the tail, well, that’s not far off. Did you know that an entire institutional subset is focused on the risk relative to theoretically ending up with a handful of grabbed cat? We’ll come to that in a minute, and how it might affect your stock.

First, these markets. Real, or more statistical arbitrage? Checking the data, something very unusual occurred last week. On November 4 in our data, the volumes we call electronic and speculative were dead, spot-on, even, at 35.8% of the total, each. That day, divergence in major market measures ceased, and volumes turned bullish. It stood out to us.

Continue reading →