The topic of deteriorating volumes in equity trading has not been far from our thoughts for a few years now but BTIG's Dan Greenhaus has one of the more explicitly clear and sobering charts of this trend today. Whether you see this as a signal of a lack of trust in our capital markets, an investor-class burned by multiple sigma events occurring weekly, an increasingly binary set of scenarios that leave investors clueless, retiring boomers demographically unwinding the 30 year rip, savings draw-downs as income stagnates, or more simply just a generational shift in attitudes towards risk appetite/tolerance; the absolute value of stocks traded is for the first time in a generation diverging rapidly lower as stocks levitate on central bank largesse. It leaves the question: who is the incremental buyer and how sustainable is their presence?
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