“I think this is going to be one of the historic recoveries, up there with the end of major wars,” he told MarketWatch around the turn of the year. “There’s enormous demand from consumers. Can you imagine when we get the all-clear and start moving back toward normalcy?”
As if the horrors of the global coronavirus pandemic weren’t enough of a curveball, the past 12 months have thrown up a slew of other headwinds against smooth market sailing. There’s the surge of retail traders bent on using the stock market as a gambling casino, and a national politics so bitter that the presidential election turned bloody.
Market observers point to all manner of weird quirks that seem to confirm something is askew. Among other things, trading volumes have plunged to start 2021. Dave Nadig is a long-time student of market structure, including as one of the first developers of exchange-traded funds to help markets avoid another blow-up like 1987’s Black Monday.
Older investing models — and algorithms — are bumping up against new ones that take into account new conditions, a process Nadig calls “an arms race,” and one that’s accelerated because of the modern speed of information flow and reaction functions.