Page 2081 - Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Buy Flood Insurance With the VIX

I am one of those cheapskates who buys Christmas ornaments by the bucket load from Costco in January for ten cents on the dollar because my eleven month return on capital comes close to 1,000%. I also like buying flood insurance in the middle of the summer when the forecast here in California is for endless days of sunshine. That is what we are facing now with the volatility index (VIX) where premiums have just broken under 20%, a six month low. The profits you can realize are spectacular.

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is a measure of the implied volatility of the S&P 500 stock index, which has been melting since the ?RISK OFF? trade peaked in early October. You may know of this from the talking heads, beginners, and newbies who call this the ?Fear Index?. Long term followers of my Trade Alert Service profited handsomely after I urged them to sell short this index with the heady altitude of 47%.

For those of you who have a PhD in higher mathematics from MIT, the (VIX) is simply a weighted blend of prices for a range of options on the S&P 500 index. The formula uses a kernel-smoothed estimator that takes as inputs the current market prices for all out-of-the-money calls and puts for the front month and second month expirations. The (VIX) is the square root of the par variance swap rate for a 30 day term initiated today. To get into the pricing of the individual options, please go look up your handy dandy and ever useful Black-Scholes equation. You will recall that this is the equation that derives from the Brownian motion of heat transference in metals. Got all that?

For the rest of you who do not possess a PhD in higher mathematics from MIT, and maybe scored a 450 on your math SAT test, or who don?t know what an SAT test is, this is what you need to know. When the market goes up, the (VIX) goes down. When the market goes down, the (VIX) goes up. End of story. Class dismissed.

The (VIX) is expressed in terms of the annualized movement in the S&P 500. So today?s (VIX) of $19 means that the market expects the index to move 5.5%, or 72 S&P 500 points, over the next 30 days. You get this by calculating $19/3.46 = 5.5%, where the square root of 12 months is 3.46. The volatility index doesn?t really care which way the stock index moves. If the S&P 500 moves more than the projected 5.5%, you make a profit on your long (VIX) positions.

Probability statistics suggest that there is a 68% chance (one standard deviation) that the next monthly market move will stay within the 5.5% range. I am going into this detail because I always get a million questions whenever I raise this subject with volatility deprived investors.

It gets better. Futures contracts began trading on the (VIX) in 2004, and options on the futures since 2006. Since then, these instruments have provided a vital means through which hedge funds control risk in their portfolios, thus providing the ?hedge? in hedge fund.

But wait, there?s more. Now, erase the blackboard and start all over. Why should you care? If you buy the (VIX) here at $19, you are picking up a derivative at a nice oversold level. Only prolonged, ?buy and hold? bull markets see volatility stay under $20 for any appreciable amount of time.

If you are a trader you can buy the (VIX) somewhere under $20 and expect an easy double sometime this year. If you are a long term investor, pick up some (VIX) for downside protection of your long term core holdings. A bet that euphoria doesn?t go on forever and that someday something bad will happen somewhere in the world seems like a good idea here.

Will Gold Coins Suffer the Fate of the $10,000 Bill?

Diary

The conspiracy theorists will love this one. Buried deep in the bowels of the 2,000 page health care bill was a new requirement for gold dealers to file Form 1099's for all retail sales by individuals over $600. Specifically, the measure can be found in section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordability Act of 2010.

For foreign readers unencumbered by such concerns, Internal Revenue Service Form 1099's are required to report miscellaneous income associated with services rendered by independent contractors and self-employed individuals. The IRS has long despised the barbaric relic (GLD) as an ideal medium to make invisible large transactions. Did you ever wonder what happened to $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 bills?

Although the Federal Reserve claims on their website that they were withdrawn because of lack of use, the word at the time was that they disappeared to clamp down on money laundering operations by the mafia. In fact, the goal was to flush out income from the rest of us. Dan Lundgren, a republican from California's 3rd congressional district, a rural gerrymander east of Sacramento that includes the gold bearing Sierras, has introduced legislation to repeal the requirement, claiming that it places an unaffordable burden on small business.

Even the IRS is doubtful that it can initially deal with the tidal wave of paper that the measure would create. Currency trivia question of the day: whose picture was engraved on the $10,000 bill? You guessed it, Salmon P. Chase, Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury.

Ever Wonder Where The $10,000 Bill Went?

January 23, 2012 - Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

Steve Jobs offered me one third of Apple for $50,000 and I was so smart that I turned it down. It?s funny when you think about it now, except when I?m crying,? said Nolan Bushnell, the founder of game company Atari and Jobs? first employer.

The Weekly Jobless Claims Blockbuster

Diary

Traders were taken aback this morning when the Department of Labor announced a 50,000 drop in weekly jobless claims to 352,000. The street had been expecting a decline of only 19,000. It was the lowest report in almost three years, and the sharpest weekly decline in seven years.

I tell people that, if stranded on a desert island, this is the one weekly report I would want to call the direction of the economy. So I am up every Thursday morning at 5:30 am PST like an eager beaver awaiting the announcement with baited breath.

The impact will not be as great as the headline number suggests. Nearly half of the figure represents a take back of the 24,000 increase in claims for the previous week. But there is no doubt that it represents an upside surprise for the economy. And you have to put this in the context of a long steady stream of modestly positive economic data that has been printing since the summer.

The release was only able to elicit a small double digit response from the stock market. That?s because we are now up nine out of eleven days, taking the S&P 500 up 4.5% on the year, a far more blistering performance than many expected. That takes us right up to the level of 1,312, which many analysts predicted would be the high for the year.

Break this on substantial volume, and we could reach my own upside limit of 1,370. If you believe that we are trading to the top of a 300 point range from 1,070 to 1,370, as I do, then there is not a lot you want to do here when you are 81% into that move, unless you want to day trade.

At this point, I would like to refer you to my October 30, 2011 piece, ?The Stock Market?s Dream Scenario? by clicking here. Since then, two of my three predicted ?black swans? have occurred, progress on the European sovereign debt problem and the first interest rate cut by the People?s Bank of China in three years. The third, a multi trillion dollars budget and tax compromise in Washington, was dead on arrival. But hey, calling two out of three black swans is not bad!

Arriving on Schedule

January 20, 2012 - Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

?You can?t keep on firing people. We?ve gotten so mean and so lean that you naturally get to the point where there are fewer people to let go,? said Steve Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities.

2012 Strategy Luncheon Schedule

Diary

Many of you have asked for this year?s strategy luncheon calendar so you can make advance travel arrangements, so here it is. This is understandable, since the Orlando luncheon saw visitors from Brazil and Australia, the Los Angeles one had subscribers from Alaska thawing out, and at the London event the distinctive accent of Johannesburg was heard.

This year I am going into the cruise business, holding a seminar in the penthouse suite of the Cunard transatlantic liner, Queen Mary II, en route from New York to Southampton, England. The gathering will be held as we sail over the wreck of the Titanic just to keep us all humble. I promise the captain will be British, not Italian! The events in bold are already listed in the store at www.madhedgefundtrader.com under ?LUNCHEONS?. The rest will be posted in coming months. There are still a couple of Beverly Hills tickets left, so if you want to come, get a move on.

January 23 Beverly Hills
January 27 Las Vegas
February 9 Houston
February 10 Orlando
April 20 San Francisco
May 3 Phoenix
June 11 Beverly Hills
June 29 Chicago
July 5 New York
July 6-13 Queen Mary II Cruise
New York to Southampton
July 16 London
July 17 Frankfurt
October 26 San Francisco
November 8 Orlando
January 3, 2013 Chicago

Fade the Second Half of January

Diary

Let me tell you about the real January effect. Many pension and retirement funds only reshuffle weightings between different asset classes once a year, mostly in January. That has created a temporary surge of stock buying and bond selling that exhausts itself by the middle of the month. After that, the market sells off. During the second half of January in 2009, the S&P 500 dropped by 3.5%, in 2010 it plunged 5.9%, and in 2011 it pared back 0.54%.

Will history repeat itself a fourth time? The global economy is facing certain slowdowns in Europe, China, and India. The bull run in equities is rapidly approaching the advanced age of four months, long in the tooth by recent standards. I am betting that it will, but will keep my short positions small until I?m sure. The next bad headline from Europe will be the trigger.

Is the Bull Market Now a Senior Citizen?

January 19, 2012 - Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

?The journey is the reward,? said the late Apple founder, Steve Jobs.

Carnage in the Grain Pits

Diary

I have been warning readers away from the agriculture space for the past few months, and on Thursday you found out why.
More than 90% of the street was positioned for a bullish report, expecting that the last summer?s blistering drought and ongoing dryness in South American would lead to inevitable shortages.

Instead, the US Department of Agriculture dropped a bombshell, predicting in its closely watched crop report that there would be copious oversupplies of every major grain for 2012. Prices utterly collapsed, with corn (CORN) closing limit down on the day.

This is not the first time this has happened. Over the past year, the USDA has lost, and then later found, 100,000 million bushels of corn, twice, sending prices gyrating each time, and putting traders through a meat grinder. Conspiracy theorists suspect political manipulation, insider trading, or just shear incompetence. Budget cuts are a more likely cause. The less money the government agency has to spend, the more volatile and less reliable its numbers are becoming. This is a major reason why I avoid the sector like a plague going into these reports.

I?ll tell you what happens from here. After a few weeks or months, these new developments will get digested by the marketplace. A few bodies will float to the surface, as overleverage by small traders reaps its grim harvest. Liquidation of their positions will give us our final low.

Then the long term bull market in food will resume its inexorable climb, and the grains will begin a slow grind up. The bottom line is that the world is making people faster than the food to feed them. Of the 2 billion souls who will join the global population over the next 40 years, half will come from countries unable to grow enough of their own food, primarily in the Middle East. It is just a matter of time before the weather turns hostile once again. There is the ever present tailwind of global warming. And who knows? The next USDA crop report could surprise to the downside, sending prices soaring.

Demographics as Destiny

Newsletter

If demographics is destiny, then America?s future looks bleak. I have long been a fan of demographic investing which creates opportunities for traders to execute on what I call ?intergenerational arbitrage?.? When the numbers of the middle aged are falling, risk markets plunge. Front run this data by two years, and you have a great predictor of stock market tops and bottoms that outperforms most investment industry strategists.

You can distill this even further by calculating the percentage of the population in the 45-49 age bracket. The reasons for this are quite simple. The last five years of child rearing are the most expensive. Think of all that pricey sports equipment, tutoring, braces, first cars, first car wrecks, and the higher insurance rates that go with it.

Older kids need more running room, which demands larger houses with more amenities. No wonder it seems that dad is writing a check or whipping out a credit card every five seconds. I know, because I have five kids of my own. As long as dad is in spending mode, stock and real estate prices rise handsomely.

As soon as kids flee the nest, this spending grinds to a juddering halt. Adults entering their fifties cut back spending dramatically and become prolific savers. Empty nesters also start downsizing their housing requirements, unwilling to pay for those empty bedrooms, which in effect, become expensive storage facilities. This is highly deflationary and causes a substantial slowdown in GDP growth.? That is why the stock and real estate markets began their slide in 2007, while it was off to the races for the Treasury bond market.

The data for the US is not looking so hot right now. Americans aged 45-49 peaked in 2009 at 23% of the population. According to US census data, this group then began a 13 year decline to only 19% by 2022. Using my two year ?front running? rule, the bear market in equities that started in 2007 will last all the way until 2020. This is a major reason why I am predicting a second ?lost decade? of sluggish 2% GDP growth for the US, and why our stock market could remain trapped in a broad range for much of this time.

You can take this strategy and apply it globally with terrific results. Not only do these spending patterns apply globally, they also back test with a high degree of accuracy. Simply determine when the 45-49 age bracket is peaking for every country and you can develop a highly reliable timetable for when and where to invest.

Instead of poring through gigabytes of government census data, my friends at HSBC Global Research, strategists Daniel Grosvenor and Gary Evans, have already done the work for you. They have developed a table ranking investable countries based on when the 34-54 age group peaks?a far larger set of parameters that captures generational changes. The numbers explain a lot of what is going on in the world today. I have reproduced it below. From it, I have drawn the following conclusions:

* The US (SPX) peaked in 2001 when our first ?lost decade? began.

*Japan (EWJ) peaked in 1990, heralding 20 years of falling asset prices, giving you a nice back test.

*Much of developed Europe, including Switzerland (EWL), the UK (EWU), and Germany (EWG), followed in the late 2,000?s and the current sovereign debt debacle started shortly thereafter.

*South Korea (EWY), an important G-20 ?emerged? market with the world?s lowest birth rate peaked in 2010.
*China (FXI) topped in 2011, explaining why we have seen three years of dreadful stock market performance despite torrid economic growth. It has been our consumers driving their GDP, not theirs.

*The ?PIIGS? countries of Portugal, Ireland (EIRL), Greece (GREK), and Spain (EWP) don?t peak until the end of this decade. That means you could see some ballistic stock market performances if the debt debacle is dealt with in the near future.

*The outlook for other emerging markets, like Russia (RSX), Indonesia (IDX), Poland (EPOL), Turkey (TUR), Brazil (EWZ), and India (PIN) is quite good, with spending by the middle age not peaking for 15-33 years.

*Which country will have the biggest demographic push for the next 38 years? Israel (EIS), which will not see consumer spending max out until 2050. Better start stocking up on things Israelis buy.

Like all models, this one is not perfect, as its predictions can get derailed by a number of extraneous factors. Rapidly lengthening life spans could redefine ?middle age?. Personally, I?m hoping 60 is the new 40. Immigration could starve some countries of young workers (like Japan), while adding them to others (like Australia). Foreign capital flows in a globalized world can accelerate or slow down demographic trends. The new ?RISK ON/RISK OFF? cycle can also have a clouding effect.

Still, it does present an intriguing framework for analyzing the international investment scene. In the meantime, I?m going to be checking out the shares of the matzo manufacturer down the street.