If you hold a position larger than a specified threshold in a futures or options contract that is regulated by the CFTC, your clearing firm must report it and classify your position as either commercial or non-commercial (I prefer the clarity of the old “hedging vs speculative” language, but whatever). Futures traders have been tracking these reports for years, but I’m not aware of any studies that analyze the history of VIX futures commitments, with the exception of a comment…
Some people regard the bond market as the most mature financial market, providing discipline and stability where stock operators merely exhibit fear and greed. I’m not out to settle any internecine disputes here, but I do want to examine a strategy premised on the view that behavior in the bond market might tell us something useful about the equity market.
Conventionally, investor preference for higher yield correlates with a positive overall economic outlook. Brett Steenbarger looks at this phenomenon over the past…
I propose the following rule of thumb for VIX interpretation:
If you think some VIX movement entails a proposition p and movement in the other volatility indexes VXN, RVX, and VXD doesn’t entail p, you shouldn’t believe p.
Why accept this rule? Because equity indexes are highly correlated, especially over the very short term, and volatility indexes are calculated using the same methodology, such that in the case of a divergence of one volatility index from the others, the majority rule. Here’s a…
In case you’ve missed it, technical analysts have been atwitter over sightings of the mystical-sounding “golden cross”. Among the latest observations from the mainstream business press are a Barron’s online article posted yesterday and a Bloomberg piece from last week, but recent talk of the fabled Crux Aurea dates back at least as far as early June, when the daily chart of the Nasdaq Composite Index showed the 50-day simple moving average crossing above the 200-day SMA. Since then the heavenly vision has…
Investors and the financial media have been excited of late about the S&P 500 crossing above its 200-day moving average:
Harris Private Bank and Morgan Asset Management say the advance may indicate the bear market in U.S. equities that began in October 2007 is over, heralding more gains after a three- month, 39 percent increase. Analysts who base forecasts on price charts consider crossing above a moving average bullish because it shows stocks are rising faster than the long-term trend.
“That’s proven…
Thursday, January 28, 2010
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