At the Milwaukee stock-trading desk of investment bank Robert W. Baird & Co., Michael Antonelli uses the down time to send market-related tweets or works on posts for his firm's stock-market blog, Bull and Baird. A tweet from Tuesday: "Another completely dead day."
-Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2014
A parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host and gets its food from or at the expense of its host. Parasites can cause disease in humans...From the Wall Street Journal:
The stock market is hitting records again, but it doesn't feel that way on many Wall Street trading desks.
Trading volume on the major U.S. exchanges last month tumbled to its lowest level for May since the financial crisis. A daily average of 5.7 billion shares changed hands, the least for the month since 2007, according to Credit Suisse Trading Strategy.Boys, there are strategies that work in markets like this. Get off the Twitter and go think of one.
The slowdown in trading comes as investors see little reason to make big changes to their portfolios amid an expanding but unspectacular U.S. economy, lackluster first-quarter earnings reports, and above-average stock valuations as a share of projected company earnings.
The decline comes despite six record closes last month on the S&P 500, extending a trading slowdown that started after the financial crisis. Daily average U.S. stock-trading volume last year was down 37% from the peak hit in 2009, Credit Suisse data show.
This year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has made just one daily move of 2% or more. The Dow made moves of 2% or more 10 times by this time of year in 2010 and 33 times in 2009 in the same period.
At the Milwaukee stock-trading desk of investment bank Robert W. Baird & Co., Michael Antonelli uses the down time to send market-related tweets or works on posts for his firm's stock-market blog, Bull and Baird. A tweet from Tuesday: "Another completely dead day."
During livelier times, he said he would be busy taking stock orders or going over trading ideas with investors. He said the writing helps sharpen his thinking and gives him talking points for clients.
"The worst thing for a trading desk is for it to be slow," he said. "It's a tough job when it's slow because you start to overanalyze everything."The CBOE Volatility Index, the most widely cited measure of investor expectations for daily stock-market swings, on Monday slipped to its lowest level in almost 15 months. Over the past 10 days, S&P 500 volatility has reached a low seen on just 1.5% of trading days since 1970, according to MKM Partners.
"There's just not a lot of controversy in the market right now," said Scott Migliori, chief investment officer for U.S. equities at asset manager Allianz Global Investors, which has $493 billion under management....MUCH MORE
HT: Levine at Bloomberg, "Levine on Wall Street: Bored Traders Become Former Traders".
