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Start free trial →The Compound and Friends · October 2026
His guest had just described how stat-arb funds, multi-manager pods and retail drive daily single-stock moves. Brown uses the Greek mythology comparison to say market headlines are often after-the-fact stories for moves caused by automated, crowded trading.
stocks that are like, obviously Spotify and Netflix are related-ish, but for a year, it was the exact same chart, like identical. And there's a million different stocks like that that trade that just trade, they're just in the same basket of stocks that people are buying and selling.
…it three to six week. And that's generally on single stock pairs as well for mean reversion around earnings. That's why on earnings day, the majority of a single stock flow is coming from discretionary. And then on non-earnings day, the vast majority is coming from quant and retail. And then in the
media, people are looking at the preponderance of all of this data and they're coming up with the story that explains it to non-market participants who don't appreciate the degree to which this is computers trading with computers. And it sort of reminds me, I taught my daughter had a unit. I remember in elementary school, they were learning that Greek mythology. So she's like sitting reading this book. She's like, she can't make heads. Why are they giving us fairy tales to read? I say, you don't understand. This was science. Like, why does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? Oh, it's because Apollo on his chariot is being pulled across the sky and he's glowing. And so that's the sun. Why is there an earthquake? The gods are mad. You did this. Why is there a volcano? Like, this is what humans do. They need, even if it's absurd, they have to explain it. So in the media, they're looking at the net result of all this stat orb and everything that's happening. That's not a satisfying explanation. Why did the market change its mind about AI today? Is yes, and because, and then they find the headline…
I mean, this is the shameless plug to like the team. You know, like
the whole point of why we exist is to kind of, we, yeah, the bets team at Barclays. Like, how many
of you are there?