Post-Crash Cash Surplus as Catalyst

“Corporate stock repurchases and leveraged buyouts were eating up just under 10% percent of the total shares outstanding of American equities on an annual basis. This was equal to about 16 percent of the floating supply of stock through- out the land, which meant that if the trend continued, Tiger and its funds, along with other large investment ve- hicles, would own just about all the stock that was avail- able on the market by 1993. There was too much cash on the sidelines. Mutual funds were sitting on hordes of cash. Investors had moved $ 12 billion out of equity-based products and into fixed-income prod- ucts. And pension funds were seeing an increase in their cash positions. The money would have to be put to work eventually. TJie independent investors seemed to be all but out ofthe market. The crash had scared them away. They were waiting for it to seem safe to enter the markets again. They would eventually come back, and when they did-well, this was a plus factor. Wall Street was bored. The heydays of the 1980s were over, and pessimism and lethargy had set in. The phones had stopped ringing. There were fewer ideas being generated by brokers. The crash was still in peoples' minds. This caused people to”

“The put-call ratio is the trading volume of put options to call options. Money managers use it as a gauge of investor senti- ment. A high volume of calls compared to a low volume of puts means that investors are bulHsh. Robertson and the folks at”