All those FAKE and manipulative volatility injections the HFT mafia used to pull at any excuse. Haven't seen much of that at all for a while
the Fed and the talking heads complain about the lack of inflation. wait till the inflation genie is out of the bottle they will then complain how difficult it is to control and how inflation is not their fault, but are caused by exogenous factors.
How many people have you seen blow up trying to force stocks to follow their ideas? My last trading buddy lost his house and retirement betting on the collapse of the Subprime Sector in late 2005. In many of the defunct companies he's arguing with management about their aggressive accounting, dude was great with numbers but bad with Market Psychology. Did notice the Market is ignoring anything Trump say's about North Korea because Trump love's to point out he reduced the National Debt by our $5 Trillion Market Cap increase. What do you think will bring back the wild volatility back? Citron and Muddy Waters can only write so many Hit Reports, its fun trading stocks they put hit reports on.
What seems to be missing from this market? Broad public participation - this is said to be the most hated bull market in history.
Nothing is missing from this market; The market is the market. Little Miss Bitchy Market is always her angel self. Complaining about the market is like a War General or Basketball player complaining they can't win. A good trader can realize what's what and hopefully capitalize on that...they are basically immune to what other people perceive as weird things. Complainers never win, they are inevitably doomed for failure. Negative attitude is self-destructive behavior. Good trading, ET extraterrestrials
We're going the opposite direction now. Vol will kick right back up, but I'm not sure it will be in 2018. Vol bets are still very very cheap, but 2019 is the payoff.