Seizing Opportunity From Stock Market Volatility (Guest Columnist at Barron’s)

Steve Sears and I have a running joke that whenever I am tapped as a guest columnist for The Striking Price at Barron’s, we should both start buying VIX calls as inevitably something is going to come along and cause a volatility spike just in time to give me something topical to discuss.

This time around I thought China might be the culprit or Greece or Puerto Rico or the Fed or maybe even the NYSE. In fact, it was a cocktail of everything that has turned a relatively quiet Q2 into a much more menacing volatility environment in Q3. In Seizing Opportunity From Stock Market Volatility, which appears today in Barron’s, I turn my attention to small caps (RUT, IWM) and use IWM vs. SPY as a way to think about relative volatility in the context of exposure to China, the euro zone and a strong dollar. Focusing on the Russell 2000 Volatility Index (RVX) and VIX, investors have been attributing roughly the same level of uncertainty and relative risk for small caps as large caps, which I see as questionable when one considers the very different exposure each asset class has to global issues and the dollar.

Given that RVX futures (VU) are thinly traded, it probably does not make sense to be short VU and long VX, the VIX futures. Another way to translate the thinking above into a strict volatility trade would be to short an at-the-money straddle for RUT or IWM, while going long an at-the-money straddle for SPX or SPY. That type of trade is probably a stretch for most Barron’s readers, but I suspect is probably right in the wheelhouse of many readers in this space. For the Barron’s article, I came up with something simpler to execute, an IWM Aug 121/123 bull put spread, which has both volatility and directional components to it and is disengaged from volatility in SPX/SPY.

In the Barron’s article, I talk a little bit about selling volatility in a post-crisis market environment or following a significant volatility event, observing:

“Selling options on the downslope of a volatility spike is often only marginally less profitable than selling options at the top of a volatility spike.”

If any of this sounds a little bit like a corollary to some of my work on “disaster imprinting” then some readers clearly have very good memories.

Related posts:

• Availability Bias and Disaster Imprinting
• VIX Data to Support Availability Bias and Disaster Imprinting Hypothesis
• The VIX:VXV Ratio, Availability Bias and Disaster Imprinting
• Be Greedy When Others Are Fearful (Barron’s)

A full list of my (16) Barron’s contributions:

• Seizing Opportunity From Stock Market Volatility (July 11, 2015)
• How to Ride an Aging Bull (November 29, 2014)
• Investors' Best Options in a ‘No Fear’ Market (July 2, 2014)
• Low Volatility: How to Profit from a Quiet VIX (May 22, 2014)
• Emerging Market Stocks: Have They Hit Bottom? (March 28, 2014)
• How to Spot Risk Early (July 16, 2013)
• How to Insure Your Stock Portfolio (April 18, 2013)
• The Case for Options Trading (January 2, 2013)
• Calm Down and Exploit Others’ Anxieties (November 14, 2012)
• How to Trade Options Around Volatile Events (July 10, 2012)
• Be Greedy While Others Are Fearful (May 3, 2012)
• Ways to Turn Volatility into an Asset Class (January 12, 2011)
• There’s Opportunity in Uncertainty (November 18, 2010)
• Will Market Volatility Return to Crisis Levels? (September 15, 2010)
• The Perils of Predicting Volatility (May 20, 2010)
• Take a Longer View on Volatility (July 2, 2009)

Disclosure(s): none

Longest SPX Peak to Trough Pullback Since 2012

I have been quiet in this space as of late, but there is nothing like a 34% one-day spike in the VIX to inspire me to dust of the cobwebs and get this place humming again. I will start by updating an old favorite table that invariably is the subject of many requests whenever stocks begin to show signs of a meaningful pullback, as is the case today.

Note that the table below includes only pullbacks from all-time highs and only those that go back to the March 2009 bottom. Here 2.75% seems to be a natural cutoff, but I am more apt to include smaller numbers if it took a relatively large number of days to arrive at the bottom. Seen in this light, today’s 2.09% decline in the S&P 500 Index brings the aggregate peak-to-trough decline to 3.7%, but perhaps the most interesting number is that it took a full 27 trading days to realize that 3.7% drop. In fact, no peak-to-trough decline has taken longer to materialize since a pair of 43-day moves from late 2012 that resulted in 8.9% and 10.9% declines. Of course, there is no reason to believe that today is a bottom, but then again, there have been only four longer-lasting pullbacks since the current bull market started over five years ago.

[source(s): CBOE, Yahoo, VIX and More]

Depending upon whether one attributes the current pullback to China, Greece, Puerto Rico or more nebulous factors as valuation, time without a correction, etc. one might draw different conclusions about the path forward. Personally, I see China as the biggest culprit, followed (at least today) by Puerto Rico and then Greece. What concerns me most is that the issues in China and Puerto Rico are no less thorny or difficult to resolve than they are in Greece.

For what it is worth, while I think it is important to understand the age of a bull market as a partial proxy for vulnerability, I do not subscribe to the theory that a healthy market needs a 10% correction every x months or y years. Further, did the 9.8% peak-to-trough decline in the SPX really need another 0.2% to reset some sort of magical market-timing sundial? (Don’t forget that both the NASDAQ-100 [NDX] and Russell 2000 [RUT] did hit that threshold during the same period.)

In technical analysis, the time for a move to unfold is sometimes almost as important as the magnitude of the move. In another week or so, we should know whether the current price action is just a slow-motion, short and shallow dip or perhaps the first signs of a deeper and more painful countertrend – and the best part is that we don’t even need a referendum to decide the matter.

Related posts:

• Four Years of SPX Pullbacks in One Plot

Disclosure(s): none

Largest SPX Pullback of 2014 Hits 6.4%

Every time there is a pullback, it seems as if I receive multiple requests for an updated version of the table below. With the S&P 500 index reeling and still trying to find a bottom, this looks like a good time to put the current pullback in the context of the 27 most significant peak-to-trough declines from new highs since the SPX bottomed in March 2009.

Note that the current 6.4% decline from the September 19^th high of 2019 is roughly average in terms of duration, but makes it the second largest pullback in percentage terms since 2012, just eclipsing the January-February 2014 pullback, when emerging markets (EEM) and Crimea were weighing heavily on the minds of investors.

Keep in mind that as ugly has things have been in the SPX, the Russell 2000 small cap index (RUT) is down 13.8% since topping out in early July, while the NASDAQ composite index is down 8.5% since its mid-September top. Of course, some sectors have been hit even harder, with oil and gas exploration and production (XOP) down 33.3% from its 2014 high. Semiconductors (SMH) have declined 14.4% from their 2014 high, yet that high was established less than a month ago.

There is never an easy answer to the question of whether this has been enough pain to warrant a bottom, but after the events of the past week, all sorts of extreme scenarios now seem much more plausible.

[source(s): Yahoo, VIX and More]

Related posts:

• The Correction As Seen in the VIX ETP Landscape
• A Very Middling Pullback, So Far
• Four Years of SPX Pullbacks in One Plot
• Chart of the Week: SPX and NDX
• Banks, Large Cap Tech and Leadership
• Chart of the Week: The Resurgent NASDAQ-100

Disclosure(s): none

Chart of the Week: Historical Volatility Plummets in Seasonal Swoon

‘Tis the season for the annual holiday effect in which historical volatility (HV) has a strong tendency to plunge and drag implied volatility down with it. This is a subject I have tackled on a number of occasions in the past (see links below) and is really just a longer variant of what I call calendar reversion – the tendency of the VIX to fall an extra 1% or so on Fridays due to market makers adjusting prices ahead of the weekend. The lack of volatility all boils down to the same root cause: fewer trading days during the 30 calendar day window specified by the VIX (and implied volatility in general) means there are fewer opportunity for stocks to stray significantly from the path projected by efficient markets, standard deviations and the rest of the normalcy regime.

As of Friday’s close the S&P 500 index had a 10-day historical volatility of 5.5, which is the lowest reading since May 2007. In this week’s chart of the week below, I have elected to show the 10-day historical volatility of the Russell 2000 small cap index (RUT), which traditionally has higher volatility than the SPX and is also more susceptible to the winds of economic change and uncertainty. As the chart shows, 10-day historical volatility (white line) sits at a two-year low and has helped to pull the implied volatility (red line) of the index down below 20. Note that last week the CBOE Russell 2000 Volatility Index (RVX) dipped as low as 19.55 and is threatening to drop below the 19.00 level for the first time since June 2007.

After the first of the year I expect to see the holiday effect magically disappear and HV, IV and volatility indices begin to reflect a more accurate view of investor expectations.

Related posts:

• SPX Historical Volatility at Two Year Low
• Historical Volatility and Seasonality Push VIX Below 20
• Historical Volatility Pointing to a Sub-20 VIX
• VIX Holiday Crush
• Sideways Markets, Covered Calls and the RUT
  

[source: Livevol.com]

Disclosure(s): Livevol is an advertiser on VIX and More

Chart of the Week: The Risk Trade

Lately I have been talking about the flight-to-safety trade in posts such as Revisiting the Flight-to-Safety Trade. In thinking about various flight-to-safety low risk havens I tend to focus on U.S. Treasuries, the dollar (UUP) and gold (GLD).

Turn the flight-to-safety trade upside down and essentially what we are looking at is the risk trade. There are many ways to think about the risk trade (growth vs. value, emerging markets vs. developed markets, consumer discretionary vs. consumer staples, etc.) but for a broad and simplified perspective on the risk trade I like to focus on market capitalization. Specifically, I like to follow the ratio of the small cap Russell 2000 index (RUT) to the mega cap S&P 100 index (OEX).

This week’s chart of the week below shows the RUT relative to the OEX (black line) since May 2008, with a gray area chart of the S&P 500 index added for context. Also included in the chart are Bollinger Bands that use customized settings of 30 days and 1.5 standard deviations (for more information on using something other than the default 20 days and 2.0 standard deviations, see the links below.) The result is a chart that tells me when the RUT:OEX ratio is high in absolute terms or relative to recent values.

If stocks are in the process of moving into an trading range (i.e., as suggested in The Elusive Trading Range), then investors should be thinking about transitioning from indicators that measure trend strength to indicators such as oscillators that measure how much various asset classes are overbought oversold.

When it comes to stocks, an important part of understanding momentum and reversal opportunities in either trending or trendless markets it to look at various proxies for the risk trade. For me at least, a good place to start is the RUT:OEX ratio and lately that ratio has done a solid job of identifying overbought and oversold conditions in stocks.

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

• Capitalization and Bullishness
• A Baker’s Dozen of Favorite Indicators
• Revisiting the Flight-to-Safety Trade
• Chart of the Week: The Flight-to-Safety Trade
• Bollinger Bands: Why Use 20 Days?
• Bollinger Bands and the Standard Deviation Setting

[source: StockCharts.com]

 

Disclosure(s): none

Chart of the Week: RUT vs. DJIA

Among the many ways to evaluate the speculative activity in stocks is to evaluate the relative interest in small cap stocks versus blue chips. I like to do this by simply comparing the Russell 2000 index of small cap stocks (RUT) to the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

As the chart of the week below shows, for all of January and most of February, these two indices were tracking fairly closely. During the last two plus weeks, however, the Russell 2000 has begun to significantly outperform the other major market indices while the DJIA has been an underperformer in relative terms. As a result, RUT has begun to separate from the DJIA, indicating that investors are developing an appetite for riskier small cap stocks and are shying away from the safer blue-chip alternatives. A strong RUT relative to the DJIA typically means that the “risk trade” is in full gear and investors are comfortable placing more money in more speculative assets. As long as this trend continues, it is generally bullish for stocks as a whole.

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

• Capitalization and Bullishness
• A Baker’s Dozen of Favorite Indicators
• RUT Hedge Fund Puke?

[source: StockCharts]

Disclosure(s): none

Sideways Markets, Covered Calls and the RUT

I had originally thought that I might begin 2010 with a series of articles on covered calls and other ways of using options to generate additional returns during sideways market action. Since several other writers have already jumped on this subject (notably Jeff Opdyke of the Wall Street Journal in Covered Calls Prove Popular Strategy; Mark Wolfinger of Options for Rookies in Writing Covered Calls in 2010; and Adam Warner of Options Zone in When Is the Best Time to Use a Buy-Write?) I am going to start slowly with these pointers above and a handful of links to previous posts below.

There is another point I wish to make. As of today’s close, the RVX, which is the volatility index for the Russell 2000 small cap index (RUT), is 33.8% higher than the VIX. As the chart below shows, this is at the high end of the range for the past year. Should volatility return to the markets, then I can certainly see how one might anticipate higher volatility in small caps than in the SPX. On the other hand, if stocks are going to continue to move sideways as they did today, then sellers of RUT options (straddles, strangles, iron condors, butterflies, etc.) should receive extra compensation for their short volatility positions.

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

• The Value of Selling Covered Calls
• The Often Overlooked Put Writing Strategy
• Unusual Chart of the Month: VXO and RVX
• One Approach for Volatile Sideways Markets
• BuyWrite Index as a Timing Tool?

[source: StockCharts]

Disclosure: none

The Emerging Markets Engine

As I write this, the EEM is about 6% off of its 52 week high, but even this number dramatically understates the staying power of this emerging markets ETF.

A better way to think about the strength of the EEM is to look at its performance relative to that of the EFA, a capitalization-weighted ETF that necessarily tilts strongly in the direction of the most developed countries in Europe, Australasia and the Far East, as the fund’s holdings confirm.

Looking at a ratio chart of the EEM to the EFA, you can see that over the course of the past 4 ½ years, returns in emerging markets have consistently outstripped those of the EFA, save for two brief periods in the summer of 2004 and the summer of 2006. What I find particularly interesting is that the normally skittish emerging markets barely flinched (note the Williams %R) during the corrections that hit the SPX in February and July of this year. Not only were the dips in emerging markets brief, but the recovery in these markets was much stronger and faster than it was in the SPX or the EFA, as anyone who has watched the Chinese markets and the FXI ETF in particular can attest to.

Other ratios of speculative activity, such as the capitalization ratios of the RUT:OEX or RUT:SPX, reflect some of the battle scars of the last few months. Speculative activity in emerging markets, however, continues to show healthy investment in that sector. Whether speculation in emerging markets is in fact too healthy may become an issue in the coming year, but for now I am content to conclude that a powerful emerging markets engine is a positive signal for the global economy.

How Healthy Is the Rally?

I don't have much to add to what has already been said about today's rally.

For what it's worth I am watching three indicators in particular to gauge the health and longer term potential of this rally:
XBD -- broker/dealer index (to a lesser extent XBD:SPX, GS, BSC, BKX, CFC, etc.)
RUT -- Reuters 2000 Small Cap Index (also RUT:SPX)
EEM -- iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (also EEM:EFA)

Right now, all three indicators are outperforming the broad market indices, so I feel as if the rally is on good footing. My biggest concern coming into the day was that would be traders worried about Monday's headline risk, but the longer the indicators noted above continue to do well, the less pressure there will be on the system.

For a little while earlier in the day the markets and the VIX were both up, as fear lingered in the face of a weekend of uncertainty, but for now, the fear component of the VIX seems to be slowly dissipating.

Before I finalize my positions going into the weekend, I will take one last look at Hurricane Dean.

RUT Hedge Fund Puke?

On the off chance that there are readers out there who have not bothered to read Bernie Schaeffer’s market commentary because it requires a free registration to Schaeffer’s Research, you really should rethink that idea. Take, for instance, Schaffer’s “Monday Morning Outlook: Fear Swells Amid Market Pullback,” which was published earlier this morning. Here Schaeffer pulls a gem from Stonebrook Structured Products, a provider of hedge fund replication strategies:

“A large part of hedge fund returns are driven by shorting large-cap growth and the going long small-cap value and emerging market equity. True alpha accounts for only 20-25% of industry returns.”

Schaeffer extends this idea to come up with a hypothesis for the recent substantial performance gap for small caps (as evidenced by the Russell 2000 falling almost three times as hard as the large cap indices):

“Once the more volatile smaller-cap stocks began to seriously under perform the S&P, their short S&P hedges were not sufficiently protecting them (which caused them to be ‘too long’ in a market correction) and the hedge funds then needed to go out and sell stock from their portfolios and/or short the IWM or buy IWM puts. And all of this served to further blast the IWM.”

Interestingly, a look at the volatility of the Russell 2000 index (RVX) compared to the VIX does not reveal the underlying dynamic that Schaeffer suggested, but a study of the ratio of the IWM to the SPY does support his contention. See the two charts below for a better sense of this.

One key takeaway from this exercise is that some important volatility-related information is flying under the radar of the volatility indices. Another key takeaway is that ETFs are not only the driving the force in the markets these days, but they need to be a central part of any market technician’s analytical toolbox as well.

One Approach for Volatile Sideways Markets

About two months ago, I talked about three different buy-write products (two closed-end funds and an exchange-traded note or ETN) which are designed to mimic a strategy of writing covered calls, such as is tracked by the CBOE S&P 500 Buy-Write Index (BXM.)

I was being a little cheeky when I suggested that this index might be useful as a market timing tool. Instead, I figured that the best application of a buy-write strategy would likely be as a cash equivalent of sorts, particularly for those who were looking for a place to park their money somewhere that it could earn a reasonable return in a volatile sideways market, yet participate in any unexpected upward moves.

I think we may be in just that market environment right now.

If you are worried about the RUT falling through its 200 day SMA today and most of the other major indices penetrating their 50 day SMAs, then perhaps you should take a long look at the BEP, MCN and BWV. I am slightly partial to the BWV, because, as an ETN, it will not have (taxable) distributions. There has been very little volume in BWV in the two months it has traded, but with a typical bid-ask spread of 0.10, it is competitive with the more liquid BEP and MCN at least on a small scale.

Capitalization and Bullishness

An unusual aspect of the post-2/27 rebound in the markets has been the ascendancy of large cap stocks over smaller capitalization ones. While there have been many periods in which large caps have outperformed small caps, in our current 4 ½ year bull market, this has never coincided with a dramatic up leg in the S&P 500, as the ratio chart for the Russell 2000 and the S&P 100 demonstrates below (click for a larger image):

If you turn back the clock to the 1990s, however, you discover that there is an important precedent for large cap outperformance leading the broader markets up. Specifically, the period of 1995-1999 saw the OEX dramatically outperform the RUT in relative terms, dragging the broader markets through a bull run that none of us will ever forget.

The 1995-1999 period is also a very interesting one from a VIX perspective (yes, it’s always about the VIX, isn’t it?) because it coincides with the one long-term bull market in which volatility and stocks moved up hand in hand, as I discussed at some length two weeks ago in “The SPX and the VIX Revisited.” (Incidentally, given the strong response to that post, I have moved it to the select “Archive Highlights” section in the right hand column of the blog.)

With every ‘discovery’ comes more questions and the question this observation has raised for me is the relationship between volatility and the relative performance of different capitalization groups. Stay tuned…