06/05/2021 — Reverse Decay

Anyone with even the slightest understanding of basic options theory will tell you that the value of an option…

02/01/2021 — Welcome to GameStopGate

The days, weeks, and maybe months ahead will reveal bits and pieces of last week’s attempted trading coup, filling gaps in our collective understanding of what took place, in just one more crazy story of a bizarre year. At present, the press and pundits have…

01/07/2021 — Market Misunderstanding

I’m not surprised that the S&P futures are up 40 points only 24 hours after an armed insurrection swarmed, and momentarily took control of the US Capitol building. A few friends of mine contacted me to ask about what effect all of this had on the market. They…

03/01/2021 — Don’t Miss The Boat…Er Point

Just another pedestrian 600 point rally for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Facetious as that last sentence may sound, there exists a bit of truth under the sarcasm.

05/17/2021 — Volatility (Slight Return)

After a month of very little (good) trade, last week gave a glimmer of hope that near-term…

04/01/2021 — April Fool

Near the end of the ol’ floor days, a small minority of traders routinely supplied the vast majority of markets for customer-quoted prices in the VIX pit. The advent of negotiated trading (where brokers proffer hypothetical offers to secure their cut of a marketable order) permitted…

05/28/2021 — The FOMO Market

I learned about FOMO four years ago as friends laughed at my continued ignorance of modern terms, or as I like to call them, lazy abbreviations. I can appreciate this particular shorthand a bit more for its muppet-like goofy sound and its lexical proximity to FOMC (Federal Open…

01/25/2021 — A Perpetual Source of Volatility

At around 9:50 CST this morning, financial markets went into a brief, but sharp nosedive. The S&P index lost over 60 points in about fifteen minutes. As usual, the pundits scrambled to come up with explanations for the tumble, and many of them…

03/07/2021 — A Systemic Problem?

At 5:00 PM today, when the market reopened after its brief two day slumber, buyers quickly forced a 20 point rally in the S&P index. Not to be out done, a couple hours later the sellers decided they’d had enough of the optimism and swiftly pushed things in the other…

01/14/2021 — Known Unknowns

Almost two decades ago, media outlets and the much of the population laughed heartily when then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld…