Markets Ain’t Got a Thing, If They Ain’t Got That Swing

When it comes to stock markets, they ain’t got a thing if they ain’t got that (volatility) swing. Traders are near giddy at the arrival of a little up/down movement in major markets, as this Bloomberg piece shows:

“Non-volatile, docile markets are really hard,” said Robert Doll, chief investment officer of global equities at BlackRock Inc., which manages $1.1 trillion in New York. “You like to buy things down and sell things up. If you don’t get a volatile market, you don’t get that swing.”

…”We found it tougher to find new ideas over the past year,” said Patrick Becker Jr., who oversees $2.5 billion at Becker Capital Management in Portland, Oregon. “I’d walk in to the office and say, ‘What’s going on?’ And they would say, ‘Nothing’s really moving.”’

Ah, happy days are here again.

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