Kangaroo Markets

The morning started with indices down fractions of 1% which is typical profit taking after a strong up day like yesterday. I would be curious to see a breakdown by transaction size. I suspect the big down days are dominated by individual investors and the mild days are institutions taking profits from short-term positions that suddenly provide a nice profit to goose their annual return.

Institutional investors are typically mutual funds or pension plans. They have different constraints and goals. Mutual funds are looking for a good return in exchange for particular levels of risk. Pension funds are looking for little or no risk and a good return.

Anyway, confidence remains strong and indices are up a bit under 1%. I would love to see the code that program traders use to decide whether to buy or sell.