Volatility During Crises

[The following first appeared in the August 2011 edition of Expiring Monthly: The Option Traders Journal. I thought I would share it because it might help some readers put the current fiscal cliff crisis in historical context.]

The events of the last three weeks are a reminder that financial crises and stock market volatility can appear almost instantaneously and mushroom out of control before some investors even have a chance to ask what is happening. A case in point: on August 3^rd investors were breathing a sigh of relief after the United States had finalized an agreement to raise the debt ceiling; at that time, the VIX stood at 23.38, reflecting a relative sense of calm, yet just three days later, the VIX jumped to 48.00 as two new crises displaced the debt ceiling issue.

Spanning the globe from Northern Africa, Japan, Europe and the United States, 2011 has seen no shortage of crises in the first eight months of the year. Given this pervasive crisis atmosphere, it is reasonable for investors to consider how much volatility they should anticipate during a crisis. In this article I will attempt to put crises and volatility in some historical perspective and address a variety of factors that affect the magnitude and duration of volatility during a crisis, drawing upon fundamental, technical and psychological causes.

Volatility in the Twentieth Century

Every generation likes to think that the issues of their time are more daunting and more complex than those faced by prior generations. No doubt investors fall prey to this kind of thinking as well. With a highly interconnected global economy, a news cycle that races around the globe at the speed of light and high-frequency and algorithmic trading systems that have transferred the task of trading from humans to machines, there is a lot to be said for the current batch of concerns. Looking at just the first half of the twentieth century, however, investors had to cope with the Great Depression, two world wars and the dawn of the nuclear age.

Given that the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) was not launched until 1993, any evaluation of the volatility component of various crises prior to the VIX must rely on measures of historical volatility (HV) rather than implied volatility. As the S&P 500 index on which the VIX is based only dates back to 1957, I have elected to use historical data for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dating back to before the Great Depression. In Figure 1 below, I have collected peak 20-day historical volatility readings for selected crises from 1929 to the present.

Before studying the table, readers may wish to perform a quick exercise by making a mental list of some of the events of the 20^th century that constituted immediate or deferred threats to the United States, then compare the magnitude of that threat with the peak historical volatility observed in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. If you are like most historians and investors, after looking at the data you will probably conclude that the magnitude of the crisis and the magnitude of the stock market volatility have at best a very weak correlation.

[source(s): Yahoo]

Any ranking of crises in which the Cuban Missile Crisis and the attack on Pearl Harbor rank in the lower half of the list is certain to raise some eyebrows. Frankly I would have been surprised if even one of these events failed to trigger a historical volatility reading of 25, but seeing that was the case for half the crises on this list certainly provides a fair amount of food for thought.

Volatility in the VIX Era

With the launch of the VIX it became possible not only to evaluate historical volatility, but implied volatility as well. With only 18 years of data to draw upon, there is a limited universe of crises to examine, so in the table in Figure 2 below, I have highlighted the seven crises in the VIX era in which intraday volatility has reached at least 48. Additionally, I have included five other crises with smaller VIX spikes for comparison purposes.

[source(s): CBOE, Yahoo]

[Some brief explanatory notes will probably make the data easier to interpret. First, the crises are ranked by maximum VIX value, with the maximum historical volatility in an adjacent column for an easy comparison. The column immediately to the right of the MAX HV data captures the number of days from the peak VIX reading to the maximum 20-day HV reading, with negative numbers (LTCM and Y2K) indicating that HV peaked before the VIX did. The VIX vs. HV column calculates the amount in percentage terms that the peak VIX exceeded the peak HV. The VIX>10%10d… column reflects how many days transpired from the first VIX close above its 10-day moving average to the peak VIX reading. The SPX Drawdown column calculates the maximum peak to trough drawdown in the S&P 500 index during the crisis period, not from any pre-crisis peak. The VIX:SPX drawdown ratio calculates the percentage change in the VIX from the SPX crisis high to the SPX crisis low relative the percentage change in the SPX during the same period (of course these are not necessarily the VIX highs and lows during the period.) The SPX low relative to the 200-day moving average is the maximum amount the SPX fell below its 200-day moving average during the crisis. Finally, the last two columns capture the number of consecutive days the VIX closed at or above 30 during the crisis and the number of days the SPX closed at least 4% above or below the previous day’s close during the crisis.]

Looking at the VIX era numbers, it is not surprising that the financial crisis of 2008 dominates in many of the categories. Reading across the rows, one can get an interesting cross-section of each crisis in terms of various volatility metrics, but I think some of the more interesting analysis comes from examining the columns, where we can learn something not just about the nature of the crises, but also about volatility as well. One important caveat is that the limited number of data points does not allow for this to be a statistically valid sample, but that does not preclude the possibility of drawing some potentially valuable and actionable conclusions.

Looking at the peak VIX reading relative to the peak HV reading I note that in all instances the VIX was ultimately higher than the maximum 20-day historical volatility reading. In the five lesser crises, the VIX was generally 50-80% higher than peak HV. In the seven major crises, not surprisingly HV did approach the VIX in several instances, but in the case of the 9/11 attack and the 2010 European sovereign debt crisis the VIX readings grossly overestimated future realized volatility.

One of my hypotheses about the time between the first VIX close above its 10-day moving average and the ultimate maximum VIX reading was that the longer the period between the initial VIX breakout and the maximum VIX, the higher the VIX spike would be. In this case the Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) and 2008 crises support the hypothesis, but the data is spotty elsewhere. The current European debt crisis, Asian Currency Crisis of 1997 and 9/11 attack all reflect a very rapid escalation of the VIX to its crisis high. In the case of the May 2010 ‘Flash Crash’ and the Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown, the maximum VIX reading happened just one day after the initial VIX breakout. As many traders use the level of the VIX relative to its 10-day moving averages as a trading trigger, the data in this column could be of assistance to those looking to fine-tune entries or better understand the time component of the risk management equation.

Turing to the SPX drawdown data, the Asian Currency Crisis stands out as one instance where the VIX spike seems in retrospect to be out of proportion to the SPX peak to trough drawdown during the crisis. On the other side of the ledger, the drawdown during the Dotcom Crash appears to be consistent with a much higher VIX reading. Here the fact that it took some 2 ½ years for stocks to find a bottom meant that when the market finally bottomed, investors were somewhat desensitized and some of the fear and panic had already left the market, which is similar to what happened at the time of the March 2009 bottom. Note that the median VIX:SPX drawdown ratio for all twelve crises is 10.0, which is about 2 ½ times the movement in the VIX that one would expect during more normal market conditions.

The data for the SPX Low vs. 200-day Moving Average is similar to that of the SPX drawdown. For the most part, any drawdown of 10% or more is likely to take the index below its 200-day moving average. In the seven major crises profiled above, all but the Asian Currency Crisis dragged the index below its 200-day moving average; on the other hand, in all but one of the lesser crises the SPX never dropped below its 200-day moving average. Based on this data at least, one might be inclined to include the 200-day moving average breach as one aspect which helps to differentiate between major and minor crises.

As I see it, the last two columns – consecutive days of VIX closes over 30 and number of days in which the SPX has a 4% move – are central to the essence of the crisis volatility equation. Since the dawn of the VIX, the SPX has experienced a 2% move in about 80% of its calendar years, the VIX has spiked over 30 about 60% of the years, and the SPX has seen at least one 4% move in about 40% of those years. Those 4% moves are rare enough so that they almost always occur in the context of some sort of major crisis. In fact, one could argue that a 4% move in the SPX is a necessary condition for a financial crisis and/or a significant volatility event.

Fundamental, Technical and Psychological Factors in Crisis Volatility

Crises have many different causes. In the pre-VIX era, we saw a mix of geopolitical crises and stock market crashes, where the driving forces were largely fundamental ones. During the VIX era, I would argue that technical and psychological factors become increasingly important. The rise of quantitative trading has given birth to algorithmic trading, high-frequency trading and related approaches which place more emphasis on technical data than fundamental data. At the same time, retail investing has been revolutionized by a new class of online traders and the concomitant explosion in self-directed traders. This increased activity at the retail level has added a new layer of psychology to the market.

In terms of fundamental factors, one could easily argue that the top nine VIX spikes from the list of VIX era crises all arise from just two meta-crises, whose causes and imperfect resolution has created an interconnectedness in which subsequent crises are to a large extent just downstream manifestations of the ripple effect of the original crisis.

The first example of the meta-crisis effect was the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, which migrated to Russia in the form of the 1998 Russian Ruble Crisis, which played a major role in the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management.

The second example of meta-crisis ripples begins with the Dotcom Crash and the efforts of Alan Greenspan to stimulate the economy with ultra-low interest rates. From here it is easy to draw a direct line of causation to the housing bubble, the collapse of Bear Stearns, the 2008 Financial Crisis and the recurring European Sovereign Debt Crisis. In each case, the remedial action for one crisis helped to sow the seeds for the next crisis.

In addition to the fundamental interconnectedness of these recent crises, it is also worth noting that the lower volatility crises were largely point or one-time-only events. There was, for instance, only one Hurricane Katrina, one turn of the clock for Y2K and one earthquake plus tsunami in Japan. As a result, the volatility associated with these events was compressed in time and accordingly the contagion potential was limited. By contrast, the major volatility events are more accurately thought of as systemic threats that ebbed and flowed over the course of an extended period, typically with multiple volatility spikes. In the same vein, the attempted resolution of these events generally included a complex government policy cocktail, whose effects were gradual and of largely indeterminate effectiveness.

Apart from the fundamental thread running through these crises, I also believe there is a psychological thread that sometimes spans multiple crises. Specifically, I am referring to the shadow that one crisis casts on future crises that follow it closely in time. I call this phenomenon ‘disaster imprinting’ and psychologists characterize something similar as availability bias. Simply stated, disaster imprinting refers to a phenomenon in which the threats of financial and psychological disaster are so severe that they leave a permanent or semi-permanent scar in one’s psyche. Another way to describe disaster imprinting might be to liken it to a low-level financial post-traumatic stress disorder. Following the 2008 Financial Crisis, most investors were prone to overestimating future risk, which is why the VIX was consistently much higher than realized volatility in 2009 and 2010.

While it is impossible to prove, my sense is that if the events of 2008 were not imprinted in the minds of investors, the current crisis atmosphere might be characterized by a much lower degree of volatility and anxiety.

Conclusion

As this goes to press, the current volatility storm is drawing energy from concerns about the European Sovereign Debt Crisis as well as fears of a slowdown in global economic activity. The rise in volatility has coincided with a swift and violent selloff in stocks that has seen six days in which the S&P 500 index has moved at least 4% either up or down – a rate that is unprecedented outside of the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Ultimately, the severity of a volatility storm is a function of both the magnitude and the duration of the crisis, as well as the risk of contagion to other geographies, sectors and institutions. Act I of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, in which Greece played the starring role, can trace its origins back to December 2009. In the intervening period, it has spread across Europe and has sent shockwaves across the globe.

By historical standards the volatility aspect of the current crisis is more severe than at any time during World War II, the Cuban Missile Crisis and just about any crisis other than the Great Depression, Black Monday of 1987 and the 2008 Financial Crisis.

In the data and commentary above, I have attempted to establish some historical context for volatility during various crises extending back to 1929 and in the process give investors some metrics for evaluating current and future volatility spikes. In addition, it is my hope that concepts such as meta-crises and disaster imprinting can help to bolster the interpretive framework for investors who are seeking a deeper understanding of volatility storms and the crises from which they arise.

Related posts:

• The Biggest VIX Spike Ever: A Retrospective
• VIX Sets Some New Records, Suggesting Volatility Near Peak
• Highest Intraday VIX Readings
• Short-Term and Long-Term Implications of the 30% VIX Spike
• VIX Spike of 35% in Four Days Is Short-Term Buy Signal
• Lessons from the Post-2/27 VIX Price Action
• VIX Approaches Pre-2008 Record Highs
• VXO Chart from 1987-1988 and Explanation of VIX vs. VXO
• Volatility History Lesson: 1987
• Chart of the Week: VXV and Systemic Failure
• Forces Acting on the VIX
• A Conceptual Framework for Volatility Events

Disclosure(s): none

Echo Volatility and Another VIX Double Top

Back in 2007, I wrote extensively about the phenomenon I dubbed echo volatility, in which large VIX spikes are frequently accompanied by a second spike of similar size in the month or so following the initial spike. Following the twin VIX spikes over 80 in 2008, I reprised this them in a post I titled The Significance of Double Tops in the VIX.

Lo and behold, here we are in another volatility storm and we have what looks like it was a VIX top of 48.00 on August 8^th followed by a spike to 45.28 today – a nine day span between VIX spikes.
Of prior instances of VIX double tops, certainly the most dramatic comes from 2008, when the VIX hit an all-time high of 89.53, pulled back more than 45 points, then spiked all the way back up to 81.48 some 20 trading days later. The timing of these VIX spikes was eerily reminiscent of the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management fiasco, when the VIX hit 48.06 on September 11^th, then exactly 20 days later hit a crisis high of 49.53.

In addition to those 20-day periods between VIX spikes, there is also precedent for a 9-day twin top going back to 2002, coinciding with the WorldCom bankruptcy filing. Here we saw a top of 48.46 on July 24^th and a secondary spike to 45.21 nine days later.

In sum, of the top seven highest VIX spikes recorded to date, four of these have seen two separate spikes in which the VIX exceeded 45, with those spikes falling from 9 to 20 days apart.

Clearly there are fundamental factors that can trigger another VIX spike above the 45 level before the current volatility storm has passed, but if history is any guide, two is likely to be the lucky number.

Related posts:

• The Significance of Double Tops in the VIX
• VIX Sets Some New Records, Suggesting Volatility Near Peak
• VIX Spikes and Echo Volatility
• When Is Echo Volatility Safely Behind Us?
• On Short-Term VIX Mean Reversion and Echo Volatility
• Echo Volatility, Day 10
• VIX Approaches Pre-2008 Record Highs
• Forces Acting on the VIX
• What My Dog Can Tell Us About Volatilty

[graphic: StockCharts.com]

Disclosure(s): short VIX at time of writing

VIX Spike of 35% in Four Days Is Short-Term Buy Signal

It has been awhile since I posted one of my VIX studies and given the recent spike in the VIX, today’s action seemed like a good excuse to revisit the idea of VIX spikes as contrarian bullish mean reversion buying opportunities.

Today the VIX closed at 27.91, which is up 34.9% in the four trading days since Thursday’s close of 20.69. Over the course of the 20 year history of the VIX, the volatility index has posted close-to-close four day gains of 35% on 42 occasions. If you strip out the consecutive instances of +35% days, this leaves 27 instances in which the VIX crossed above +35% in four days. I have reproduced the full table of these 27 instances below for several reasons. First, the key takeaway is that from a timing perspective, a long SPX position entered after a 35% spike will generally perform best over the course of a five day time horizon. In the graphic below, the 27 instances average a five day gain of 1.99% vs. a typical five day SPX return of 0.14%, for a 1.85% net differential. While the net differential peaks at five days, it is apparent in just one day and persists for at least fifty trading days.

Not surprisingly, since we are talking about extremely volatile periods, quite a few of the returns are at the tail end of the distribution and are highlighted in green and red. In particular, this contrarian long strategy did an excellent job of timing the bounces off of the lows during the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the Russian financial crisis and Long-Term Capital Management crisis in 1998, the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks in 2001, as well as the technology bottom following the WorldCom bankruptcy filing in 2002.

In contrast to the excellent market timing above, it should also come as no surprise that the four long signals from September and October 2008 turned out to be disasters in the 20-100 day time frame. Over the course of a 3-10 day time horizon, however, these were excellent short-term trading opportunities from the long side. I do wish to point out, however, that if one strips out the last four rows of the tables, suddenly the 100 day time frame has a return of 6.86%, which is 2 ½ times that of the baseline (“census”) return. The obvious conclusion is that the VIX spike buy signal is quite reliable for the short-term, but not as reliable for over longer time frames. This is the key take away from the table and the reason I included the full data set. The secondary conclusion is that VIX spikes are generally good long setups as well, but here the risk is that it precedes a once in a generation or two meltdown that erases a decade or more of returns.

Finally, while it is nice to throw statistics at analogous historical situations, it is important to consider that all it takes is one rogue GDP number to throw a monkey wrench into an attractive set of statistics. Tomorrow should be interesting – and I expect the bulls will be putting a great deal of capital to work no matter how the GDP data falls.

For posts on related subjects, readers are encouraged to check out:

• VIX Jumps 10% on Consecutive Days
• Long the SPX on New VIX Record Closes
• Lessons from the Post-2/27 VIX Price Action
  

Disclosure: Short VIX at time of writing.

Where Will the VIX Bottom?

As I write this, the VIX is at 28.80, after making an intraday low of 28.51 earlier in the session. Since this is the first time the VIX has traded below 30.00 since the middle of September, I am finding there is a great deal of interest in and speculation surrounding where the VIX will ultimately bottom – and what the implications are for equities.

In both How Low Can the VIX Go? and The New VIX Macro Cycle Picture, I predicted that the VIX is not likely to drop below the 25-26 level – and I am standing by that prediction. Actually, in my newsletter I have been a little more precise, saying during the past few weeks that I do not anticipate the VIX falling below 28.00 “for this leg of the bull market.” Frankly, this leg looks a little long in the tooth to me at the moment, but based on the recent price action, the current phase has more of the appearance of consolidation than reversal or impending reversal.

I have weighed in on several occasions about the perils of using the full technical analysis toolbox on the VIX, largely because there is no underlying one can buy and sell, given that the VIX is really just a calculated value. For these reasons – and given the VIX’s tendency toward mean reversion – I tend to shy away from momentum indicators and oscillators when evaluating the VIX and treat moving averages and support and resistance with several grains of salt.

Let me take a minute and put a VIX of 25 into some historical context. First, the historical average of the VIX for 20 years of data extending back to 1990 is 20.12 (dotted black line in the chart below.) The mean VIX for all of 2008, which includes a relatively calm April through August, is 32.68. Looking back at the five year period of 1998-2002, which included the Long-Term Capital Management debacle and the end of the 1990s bull market, the average VIX during this period was 25.27. Current data show S&P 500 historical volatility for the 10, 20 and 30 day lookback periods at 30.88, 27.24 and 30.53, respectively.

The bottom line: 25.00 is a low number for a volatile period.

The VIX may be better analyzed in a macroeconomic and geopolitical context than in terms of technical analysis. Ultimately, the VIX is only rarely a fear index. Most of the time, the volatility index is more accurately a measure of uncertainty or investor anxiety. With the bank stress test results behind us, concerns about structural volatility and systemic risk are now receding and being supplanted by lower anxiety concerns that I like to refer to as event volatility. Sure, the economy may have another significant misstep ahead, but talk of wholesale bank nationalization and the prospect of 15% unemployment have been replaced by discussions of green shoots, bottoming and recovery.

[As an aside, for awhile now I have been thinking about constructing something akin to a Beaufort scale for volatility so we can put absolute measures of volatility into a broader context.]

Regarding the current volatility environment, while confidence and liquidity are returning to the markets, keep in mind that for many investors, the financial and psychological scars are still in the healing process. As long as events and markets continue to improve, that healing process will continue. Should events take a sudden turn for the worse, however, I would expect to see volatility spike dramatically in a case of echo volatility, much like what I described in What My Dog Can Tell Us About Volatility.

In the absence of another spike in volatility, I would also expect to see a dramatic decline in the rate that volatility is decreasing, as we begin to approach a floor in volatility. Even as fears dissipate, there is still uncertainty about the strength of the recovery in addition to the normal uncertainty about the direction of the economy and the markets that would be associated with a period of relative market calm.

Historical volatility, therefore, should provide a volatility floor and with historical volatility currently unable to drop below the low to mid-20s, we should begin to see evidence of that volatility floor shortly. I have seen some investors call for the flood of liquidity to push the VIX under 20. I just don’t see it, at least for now. There is the possibility that stocks enter into an extended period of range-bound trading that brings volatility down to the low 20s, but I would be surprised to see a sub-20 VIX by the end of the year.

In 2007, the VIX ended the year at 22.50. While my crystal ball generally does not extend more than a month or two, my best guess is that we see the VIX in the 22.50 to 25.00 range at the end of 2009.

[source: StockCharts]

The Significance of Double Tops in the VIX

The following is adapted from a subscriber newsletter segment that appeared in the November 26^th newsletter.

I have never seen any research on the subject of VIX double tops, but given the recent double top formation in the VIX, I thought this might be a good time to share some of my thinking on the subject. First, the chart at the right shows the recent VIX levels from mid-August to the present. The first spike in the double top comes on October 24th and the most recent spike comes on November 19th.

Double tops are fairly common in the 19 year history of VIX data and frequently coincide with extreme readings in the VIX. By contrast, VIX triple tops are relatively rare; and while single VIX spikes are common in more mundane market conditions, they are less likely to be found at VIX extremes than double tops.

In fact, prior to this year, the three crises with the most extreme VIX readings were the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management Crisis, and the 2002 bottom of the technology bust that accompanied the WorldCom bankruptcy filing. In the graphs below, I have recorded the history of these VIX spikes. You can clearly see a double top pattern in the VIX in all three instances. Interestingly in each instance, the spikes were separated by approximately 2-3 weeks and signaled major turning points in the markets.

Recent events have shown that extrapolating from past chart patterns to the current market is fraught with danger, but I would argue that the presence of a VIX double top reinforces the case that the recent stock market bottom will prove to be an important market inflection point.

[source: Yahoo, VIX and More]

Yesterday’s VIX Drop Is Fifth Largest Ever in Percentage Terms

Yesterday the VIX registered its largest one day point drop in history, falling 14.96 points, but what does that mean?

If history is any guide, the drop in the VIX may not be particularly meaningful. The previous largest drop in the VIX in absolute numbers dates back to September 1, 1998. On that day, there was a brief lull in the Long-Term Capital Management crisis and the VIX pulled back from 44.28 to 36.48. Just three days later, however, the VIX was back above 44.

In percentage terms, yesterday’s 21.4% drop in the VIX is the fifth largest one day drop in the VIX in 19 years.

I wrote about previous instances of 20% drops in the VIX a little over a year ago in On the Rarity of a 20% One Day Drop in the VIX. Since that post, the VIX dropped 22.5% on 11/13/07 and exactly 20% on 3/18/08.

In the six previous instances in which the VIX has dropped at least 20%, the SPX has generally underperformed the historical averages slightly going forward.

Maybe someday I should publish the Guinness Book of Volatility Records…

VIX Expected to Open at 53-54

There are still 25 minutes before the markets open for today, but based on the futures, the day of the week and other factors, it looks like the VIX will break the 50 mark for the first time ever at the open. At this point, I am estimating a VIX in the 53-54 range at the open. This would break the previous VIX record of 49.53 set during the Long-Term Capital Management crisis.

Long the SPX on New VIX Record Closes

In light of yesterday’s record close in the VIX, a reader asked about the historical track record if one were to buy the market when the VIX made a new high.

First, let’s detail the history of new end of day highs in the VIX. Working backward, the five most recent new highs came during a span of 8/27/98 to 10/8/98 as the Russian financial crisis morphed into the Long-Term Capital Management crisis. Prior to 1998, the most recent VIX high was from 10/30/97, during the Asian financial crisis.

Looking at data from the CBOE’s historical database, which goes back to the beginning of 1990, the next three VIX highs are from August 1990. Scrolling back before the August highs, there are 11 highs in January 1990, including eight of the first ten trading days. In the chart below, I have omitted the noise from the first ten trading days and included only the last three VIX highs from the initial month of VIX data. While this leaves only ten data points, the pattern is clear: going long the SPX when the VIX makes a new high is an effective strategy, at least when the holding period is from 1 to 100 days. The mean return for the SPX following a VIX high, for instance, is about 2% ten days after the VIX high, while the mean return during all ten day periods for the SPX during the past 19 years has been only 0.3%.

For some additional mean reversion data that may be relevant to yesterday’s 34.5% VIX spike, check out a previous post, One Day 30% (!) Spikes in the VIX.

Record VIX Close of 46.72

The VIX set a new record today, with a closing price of 46.72. This record surpassed the previous record of 45.74 from October 8, 1998, which came during the Long-Term Capital Management fiasco.

Today also saw an intra-day high of 48.40 that is now the fifth highest intra-day VIX reading, behind a 49.53 reading also from October 8, 1998.

For the record, October 8th was toward the end of the panic associated with LCTM. It was the 18th day in a 1 1/2 month period that the VIX traded over 40. Following the record readings, the VIX hit 40 on each of the next four days, then did not trade in the 40s again until after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks.

Given the heightened anxiety over the financial sector and uncertainty surrounding how and when some of the issues will be resolved, today's record does not yet look like a VIX top. The VXO hit 55.10 today (the highest reading in that volatility index since July 24, 2002) and a VIX of similar magnitude is not out of the question going forward.

Could 30 Be a New VIX Floor?

Yesterday a reader asked, “Have we put in a base for the VIX above 30?”

My response began as follows:

“I count five separate instances (clusters) of the VIX hitting 40 since 1990. In only one of those (1997) did the VIX not hit 40 again shortly thereafter. For the other four, we saw 5, 7, 13, and 21 subsequent days in which the VIX made it into the 40s again. Given the magnitude of the current difficulties, I would be surprised if we do not see at least one more spike into the 40s.

As for a new floor in the VIX, 30 is on the high side, but not unprecedented. We have had several instances in the past where the VIX spent two full months almost exclusively at 30 or above.”

To elaborate a little, starting in August 1998, during the height of the Long-Term Capital Management crisis, the VIX closed over 30 each day for more than two consecutive months. This feat was matched again four years later in August 2002, following the WorldCom bankruptcy and the ultimate bottoming of the dot com crash.

For what it is worth, as of last night the VIX has closed above 30 for seven consecutive days. A two month stretch of 30+ VIX closes would take us out to mid-November.

Finally, to complete my response about the possibility of a new floor of 30 for the VIX, I noted:

“On the other hand, if the country can get behind a bailout plan that shows some creativity and potential, then I would not be surprised to see volatility to slip back to the mid-20s shortly thereafter.

...at least until we dive into the housing, jobs, and consumer spending can of worms.”

2007 vs. 1998 or Subprime vs. LTCM

Those who were active in the markets in 1998 and anyone who is a student of the markets should be asking themselves how the current subprime mortgage mess compares with the Long-Term Capital Management failure of nine years ago.

If you haven’t already read Roger Lowenstein’s excellent When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management, it isn’t too late to do so. Among the events that Lowenstein recounts is the merciless squeezing of LTCM’s positions by Goldman, Salomon and others, activities that may have strong parallels to some of what is going on behind the scenes right now.

The purpose of today’s comparison is to contrast the magnitude of the volatility triggered by the failure of LTCM to what we have seen in the last two months. Keep in mind that according to Lowenstein, LTCM’s capital peaked in April 1998, as shown in the graphic below from Siddharth Prabhu, who utilizes Lowenstein’s data.

As the graph of VIX and SPX from 1998 toward the bottom demonstrates, LTCM’s small losses from April to July have very little impact on the markets, but as the losses grow (and the Russian financial crisis widens), the VIX nearly triples over the course of two months, while the S&P 500 loses approximately 20%. For more historical context, note that by the end of the year the SPX had recovered all of those losses and moved higher, while the VIX returned almost to the pre-crisis lows.

How does the current situation stack up? Looking at the chart at the bottom, once again, the VIX has almost tripled in two months (doubled in one month), while the SPX has lost closer to 10% of its value. For comparative purposes, this means more fear in the current situation, with less in the way of financial losses – at least at this stage.

With LTCM and Amaranth already in the books, you would think that those who are in a position to avert another similar crisis would be in a better position to do so. Keep an eye on the comparisons to 1998 going forward and don’t be so quick to conclude that this time it will be worse than it was nine years ago.

Coming Soon…

There are really only four places where I can consistently brainstorm at the top of my game (a free VIX factoid for anyone who can guess all four of them) and one of them is on long airplane rides.

Since swapping the nomadic consulting lifestyle for that of the geographically constricted stay-at-home trader/investor, I sometimes find myself missing those six hour coast-to-coast flights where I could point my brainwaves in a particular direction and free associate without fear of interruption. Yesterday I had one of those rare opportunities for brainstorming at 38,000 feet and from that session comes a number of ideas that I will likely be talking about in this space in the next two or three months.

Among the subjects that I will be taking a closer look at, in no particular order:

• Looking at volatility across the full range of asset classes (not just US equities)
• Long-term volatility forecasting
• Diving deeper on the correlation between the SPX and the VIX (short-term and long-term)
• Non-VIX volatility measures for the SPX/SPY (ATR, Bollinger Band width, etc.)
• VIX implied volatility vs. historical volatility
• With hurricane season upon us, it is time to look at hurricane-related volatility in drillers, refiners and oil services companies. What are the investment opportunities? How do they mirror the VIX?
• Revisiting the idea of a VIXdex
• How to parse the universe of volatility events -- and maybe flesh out my ideas on a "taxonomy of fear"
  
• Is there a fat tails inflection point? Is there an options tipping point where mean reversion battles new money?
• Fear vs. volatility: Is it meaningful to talk about these subjects separately?
• Develop a Long Term Capital Management timeline superimposed on the VIX

If readers have any particular areas of interest they would like to see me elaborate on, just note them in the “Comments” section below and I’m sure that some of them will get thrown into my R&D queue. Also, if readers have pointers to some interesting work already done in some of my target areas of interest, I would love to hear about these as well.