March Madness and the Sweet 64

It has been quite a week, especially for VIXophiles. Not only is March Madness just around the corner, but we had our own VIX bracket buster on Tuesday when the VIX posted a sweet 64% gain.

Highlights from the week include…

Jim Kingsland being the first I saw to report that the China selloff was engineered

Brett Steenbarger putting big down days in perspective and setting expectations going forward, then adding an interesting kicker

Ticker Sense on where in bull/bear market cycles 3% declines are most likely to occur

Tim Price with my favorite quote + article look back at the drop

Adam Warner on some of the problems with VIX options

David Merkel on the definition of liquidity (the post was from the previous week, but since I just discovered The Aleph Blog and added it to my blogroll this week, I am bending the rules a little here)

blackenterprise.com picks up a story on Hedge Fund Research adding a Volatility Index for “tracking the performance of hedge fund managers who trade volatility as an asset class.”

This week’s irony award goes to Tim (Don’t-call-me-Permabear) Knight, who was snowed in somewhere in bear country when the real thing was waltzing down Broad and Wall. Tim is always a good read but should be one of your first stops when things get bearish.

Finally, I usually do not make predictions, but it was a strange week, so I thought I’d share several additional items of a personal nature, perhaps all black swans:

• What is the likelihood that a guy who has a blog with the title “VIX and More” would have his birthday on the day the VIX has a historic spike?
  
  
• What is the likelihood that I would talk about earthquakes as a metaphor for volatility and then feel one just a couple of hours later?
  
  
• What is the likelihood that I would make my first specific prediction about volatility for the coming week just last week (I thought predicting a 17% increase was going out on a limb) and talk about the need for having a plan for a -300 Dow day?