• support@madhedgefundtrader.com
  • Member Login
Mad Hedge Fund Trader
  • Home
  • About
  • Store
  • Luncheons
  • Testimonials
  • Contact Us
  • Click to open the search input field Click to open the search input field Search
  • Menu Menu

Tag Archive for: ($VIX)

MHFTR

Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or The Week That Washington Finally Mattered

Diary, Newsletter, Research

After ignoring the constant chaos in Washington for 17 months, it finally mattered to the stock market.

Guess what was at the top of the list of retaliatory Chinese import duties announced last week?

California wine!

The great irony here is that half of the Napa Valley wineries are now owned by Chinese investors looking for a bolt-hole from their own government. Billionaires in China have been known to disappear into thin air.

And after years of trying, we were just getting Chinese consumers interested in tasting our fine chardonnays, merlots, and cabernet sauvignons.

It will be a slap in the face for our impoverished farmworkers who actually pick the grapes, who have just been getting back on their feet after last fall's hellacious fires.

Do you suppose they will call the homeless housing camps "Trumpvilles?"

California is on the front line of the new trade war with China.

Not only is the Middle Kingdom the largest foreign buyer of the Golden State's grapes, almonds, raisins, and nuts, it also is the biggest foreign investor, plowing some $16 billion in investments back here in 2016.

Down 1,700 Dow points on the week and a breathtaking 1,400 points in two days. It was the worst week for the markets in two years. And the technology and financial stocks suffered the worst spanking - the two market leaders. The most widely owned stocks are seeing the worst declines.

We certainly are paying the piper for our easy money made last year. The Dow Average is now a loser in 2018, off 4.1% and back to November levels.

The Dow 600 point "flash crash" we saw in the final two hours of trading on Friday was almost an exact repeat of the February 9 swoon that took us to the exact same levels.

There was no institutional selling. It was simply a matter of algorithms gone wild. The news flow that day was actually quite good.

Our favorite stock, Micron Technology (MU) announced blockbuster earnings and high target (for more depth, please read the Mad Hedge Technology Letter).

Dropbox (DBX) went public, and immediately saw its shares soar by 50% in the aftermarket. The president signed an emergency funding bill to keep the government open, despite repeated threats not to do so.

Which means the market fell not because of a fundamental change in the US economy. It is a market event, pure and simple.

I therefore expect a similar outcome. Only this time, we don't have an $8 billion unwind of the short volatility trade ($VIX) to deal with, as we did in February. That's why I thought markets would bottom at higher levels this time around.

There is only one problem with this theory.

The chaos, turmoil, and uncertainty in Washington is finally starting to exact a steep price on shareholders. Uncertain markets commend lower price earnings multiples than safer ones.

As a result, multiples are now 15% lower than the January high at 19.5X, and much more for individual stocks. And multiples have been falling even though earnings have been rising, quite substantially so. Such is the price of chaos.

Will markets bottom out here on a valuation basis as they did last time? Or will the continued destruction of our democracy command a higher price? We will find out soon.

Clearly the S&P 500 200-day moving average at $255.95 is crying out for a revisit, which we probably will see first thing Monday morning. Allow more shorts to get sucked in, and then you probably have a decent entry point to buy stocks for the rest of 2018.

Indeed, it was a week when the black swans alighted every day. First, the twin hits from Facebook (FB), followed by the worst trade war in eight decades. Then came the Chinese retaliation.

While the damage suffered so far has been limited, investors are worried about what is coming next.

One of the last supervising adults left the White House, my friend and comrade in arms, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. His replacement is Fox News talk show host John Bolton, who is openly advocating that the US launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against North Korea.

Bolton has quite a track record. He is the guy who talked President Bush into invading Iraq. Now, that would trigger a new bear market in the extreme!

As I did not predict five black swans in five days, the Mad Hedge Trade Alert Service took a hit this week, backing off of fresh all-time highs.

The trailing 12-month return fell to 46.49%, the 8-year return to 284.01%, bringing the annualized average return down to only 34.08%.

Given all of the above, economic data points for the coming holiday shorted trading week seem almost quaintly irrelevant. But I'll give them to you anyway.

On Monday, March 26, at 10:30 AM, we get the February Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey.

On Tuesday, March 27, at 9:00 AM, we receive an update on the all-important CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price NSA Index for January. A 3-month lagging housing indicator.

On Wednesday, March 28, at 8:30 AM EST, the second read of Q1 GDP comes out.

Thursday, March 29, leads with the Weekly Jobless Claims at 8:30 AM EST, which hit a new 49-year low last week at an amazing 210,000. At 9:45 AM, we get the February Chicago Purchasing Managers Index. At 1:00 PM, we receive the Baker-Hughes Rig Count, which saw a small rise of three last week.

On Friday, March 30, the markets are closed for Good Friday.

As for me, I'll be doing my Christmas shopping early this year before the new Chinese import tariffs jack up the price for everything by 15% to 25%.

I'll be doing all of this courtesy of Amazon (AMZN), of course. Since I arrived here at Lake Tahoe, it has snowed 6 feet in two days in a storm of truly biblical proportions. We got a total of 18 feet of snow in March. By the time I dig out, it will be time to go home.

Good luck and good trading.

John Thomas

 

 

 

 

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/STORY-1-IMAGE-5-e1521933309239.jpg 400 300 MHFTR https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png MHFTR2018-03-26 01:08:452018-03-26 01:08:45Market Outlook for the Week Ahead, or The Week That Washington Finally Mattered
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Buy Flood Insurance With the VIX

Diary, Newsletter

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 been hugging the 12%-14%% range recently. Get this one right, and 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? died a horrible death.

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 at 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, which today is at 1,800. So a (VIX) of $14 means that the market expects the index to move 4.0%, or 72 S&P 500 points, over the next 30 days. You get this by calculating $14/3.46 = 4.0%, 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 4.0%, 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 4.0% 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 $14, you are picking up a derivative at a nice oversold level. Only prolonged, ?buy and hold? bull markets see volatility stay under $14 for any appreciable amount of time.

If you are a trader you can buy the (VIX) somewhere under $14 and expect an easy double sometime in the coming months. If we get another 10% correction somewhere along that way, that would do it.

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.

If you don?t want to buy the (VIX) futures or options outright, then you can always buy the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX). Easier still is the (UVXY), which is particularly useful for trading narrow ranges like the one we have had.

If you lose money on this trade, it will only be because you have made a fortune on everything else you made. No one who buys fire insurance ever complains when their house doesn?t burn down.

$vix
VXX
UVXY

 

Man-Pogo Stick

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Man-Pogo-Stick.jpg 430 288 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2016-04-20 01:07:242016-04-20 01:07:24Buy Flood Insurance With the VIX
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

A Mad Hedge Strategy Change

Diary, Newsletter

Followers of my Trade Alert service have noticed some unusual activity during the last two days. Instead of recommending put spreads, I have started advising the purchase of outright puts.

Coming on top of big declines in the S&P 500 (SPY), you may have thought that I have lost my mind, if I hadn?t already done so a long time ago.

My kids would agree with you.

However, there is a method to my madness.

The truly brilliant aspect to the option spread strategy that I have been using for the past four years was that the positions had an embedded short volatility aspect to them.

While you were long volatility with your long leg, this was offset by the short volatility in your short leg.

This gave you a net volatility exposure of close to zero, a great thing to have during a time of secular declining volatility, as we have seen since 2012. Think of the first eight months of 2015, when index prices barely budged.

It also meant that you could achieve your maximum profit when the underlying stock remained unchanged, or moved only a few percent against you.

The nice thing about this low volatility was that it gave time to followers to get in and out of positions before large price changes occurred. Moves of only a few cents before you received trade alerts were common.

By focusing on front month options I also took maximum advantage of accelerated time decay going into each expiration. It was like having a rich uncle write you a check every day.

The low volatility delivered only small changes in the value of your portfolio from the day-to-day movements in the market, tiny enough for the novice investor to live with.

This is what enabled me to produce huge, outsized double digit returns while most other managers were sucking wind.

Since August 24, we have been in a completely different world. The long-term trend in volatility isn?t falling anymore. It has been rising.

What this brought to my trading book was a series of stop outs on options spread positions, whether they were call spreads or put spreads, and painful losses.

This is why I lost money in two out of three months in the recent quarter, a rare event. Having an embedded short volatility position was alas costing me money.

So it is time to adjust our strategy to reflect this brave new, and more volatile world.

So instead of running positions into expiration, I am going to start hedging them with options when a breakdown in the market appears imminent.

This is why I picked up the February $190 puts on Friday to hedge my January $185-$190 calls spread. It is also why I bought the February $187 puts to hedge my January $182-$187 call spread.

Why the mismatch in expirations? It ducks the problem of final week super accelerated time decay with my long puts. It also means I can continue with the short positions after the Friday January expiration, if I choose to do so.

There is one complication with this approach. Individual options are vastly more volatility than option spreads. So it won?t be unusual for an option to move 5%-10% by the time you receive the Trade Alerts. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

Let?s look at out current positions as examples. For further analysis you have to be familiar with the concept of on option delta. Delta is a letter of the Greek alphabet used by traders to refer to the movement of an option relative to its underlying security.

A delta of 10% means that a $1 move in the underlying produces a 10-cent move in the option, which you see in deep out-of-the-money options. A delta of 90% means that a $1 move in the underlying produces a 90-cent move in the option, which is found with deep-in-the-money options.

The January $185-$190 vertical call debit spread had two legs, and the delta can be calculated as following:

A long January 185 call with a delta of +19%
A short January 190 call with a delta of -39% (negative since you are short)
This gives you a net delta of (39% - 19%) = -20%.

In other words, a $1 move down in the underlying (SPY) index only moves the $185-$190 call spread south by -20 cents.

In the case of the $182-$187 call spread, the net delta is only 14%, giving you a move in the spread of only 14 cents for the $1 (SPY) move.

Let?s say that the market looks like it is going to pieces and I want to hedge my downside exposure. That means I need to buy puts against my long call spread.

Since my net delta is only -20% on the January $185-$190 vertical call debit spread, I only need to buy 20% as many puts to neutralize the position, or 0.2 X 22 = 4.4 options.

To be more aggressive on the downside I increased my put purchase to 13 contracts to also provide extra downside protection of my short volatility (XIV) position. I then repeated this exercise on Monday for the $182-$187 vertical call debit spread.

What we end up with is a portfolio that is profitable at all points with a Friday January 15 (SPY) options expiration between $187-$194. Now you don?t have to touch the position, unless we break out of that range.

This prevents you from attempting to trade every triple digit ratchet in the market between now and then. This is a hopeless exercise. I know because I have tried it many times, to no avail.

Yes, I know this all sounds complicated. But this is how the pros do it. This is how they make money. It?s all about preserving your capital and making incremental profits on top of it. Watch, and learn.

Learn from my errors and prosper.

VIX 1-11-16

SPY 1-11-16

SharkYou Get Used to Them After a While

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Shark-e1452551147728.jpg 224 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2016-01-12 01:07:272016-01-12 01:07:27A Mad Hedge Strategy Change
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Volatility Here is Peaking

Diary, Newsletter, Research

It is often said that the stock market has discounted 12 out of the last four recessions.

While the market is discounting another recession now, I believe it is one of the many previously forecast that will never happen, a lot like to 18% swoon in the futures markets we saw last summer.

If anything, the reported hard data are showing that the economy is strengthening now, not weakening. The December nonfarm payroll hit a one-year high at 292,000. Christmas sales were off the charts for online merchants.

Auto production topped an 18 million rate. And this is an industry that was bankrupt only seven years ago.

But what else would you expect from a global economy that just has a $2 trillion annual tax cut dumped in its lap, thanks to lower energy prices.

I therefore think we are within days of the final capitulation of this move. That means the Volatility Index (VIX) will peak as well, probably around $30, the top that defined the top of every spike for all of 2015, except for the August 24 flash crash day. That apex is probably only days away.

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 theoretical 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 doubled, from $15 to near $30. Get this one right, and the profits you can realize are spectacular.

Watch carefully for other confirming trends to affirm this trade is unfolding. Those would include a strong dollar, collapsing stocks, and oil in free fall, and a weak Japanese yen, Euro.

I don?t know about you, but I am seeing seven out of seven cross asset confirming price action.

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is a measure of the implied volatility of the S&P 500 stock index, which has been rallying hard since oil began its precipitous slide three weeks ago.

You may know of this from the many clueless 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 three years ago 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 expiration's.

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, which today is at 1,800. So a (VIX) of $14 means that the market expects the index to move 4.0%, or 72 S&P 500 points, over the next 30 days.

You get this by calculating $14/3.46 = 4.0%, 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 4.0%, 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 4.0% 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 sell short the (VIX) here at $24, you are picking up a derivative at a nice overbought level. Only prolonged, ?buy and hold? bull markets see volatility stay under $14 for any appreciable amount of time. That?s probably what we have now.

If you are a trader you can sell short the (VIX) futures somewhere over $20 and expect an easy profit sometime in the coming weeks. If we get another 5% rally somewhere along that way, that would do it.

If you don?t want to sell the (VIX) futures or options outright, then you can always sell short the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX). Better yet, you can buy a short (VIX) ETN outright, the Velocity Shares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN (XIV).

If you make money on this trade, it will offset losses on other long positions.

No one who buys fire insurance ever complains when their house doesn?t burn down.

VIX 1-11-15

VXX 1-11-16

1-11-16

Tiger hugs ManVolatility Can Be Your Friend

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Tiger-hugs-Man-e1452549843482.jpg 400 262 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2016-01-12 01:06:382016-01-12 01:06:38Volatility Here is Peaking
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Coming Market Reaction to the Fed Decision

Diary, Newsletter

Up, then down, then up again.

How about that?

Will the Federal Reserve reverse their nine-year interest rate-cutting trend, or does it have another three months of life?

Is global economic weakness, or the approach of US full employment first and foremost in the mind of my friend, Federal Reserve governor Janet Yellen?

I?m sure that two days before the meeting, even the Fed itself doesn?t know the answer to these burning questions.

That has been the wellspring of the tremendous volatility we have grievously suffered for the past month that had the Volatility Index (VIX) at one point tickle a twice a decade high 53% level.

But could we be focusing on the wrong thing?

Is the Fed decision a simple matter of smoke and mirrors distracting us from the real market driver?

That would be the calendar.

After all the pundits predicted that the ?Sell in May, and go away? effect was utterly useless, backward looking, and little more than popular folklore, it then performed like a star.

I was certain this would be the case, and warned readers in the spring we would see a ?Sell in May, and go away? with a turbocharger, racing tires, and fuel injection.

This is why almost every S&P 500 Trade Alert I shot out since April was from the short side. My strategy thankfully delivered windfall profits for believing followers.

The problem is we may be trying to overthink the markets.

The May peak, and the 15% swoon that followed could be simply no more than further proof of the 60 year seasonal preference to sell stocks in the Spring and buy them back in the Fall.

Global growth fears, the China slowdown, stock market crash, and currency devaluation, the European refugee crisis, ISIS, the commodity collapse, saber rattling from Russia, and even share price valuations all could be nothing more than simple noise.

If I am right, then the Thursday Fed decision will be absolutely of no consequence. Whether they raise ?% and follow it up with ultra dovish talk will have no impact of the profitability of US companies whatsoever, except financials.

As we mathematicians like to say, ?it is close enough to zero to still be zero.?

The mere fact that the Fed decision is out of the way is the really important thing.

I have always believed that making money in the stock market is all about anticipating what is going to happen next.

What happens after a China crash? A China recovery.

European chaos? European stability.

An ISIS victory? An ISIS defeat.

A commodity collapse? A commodity bull market.

Russian saber rattling? Russian peace overtures.

Concern about share valuations? A return to momentum investing.

It all adds up to a global synchronized economic recovery sometime in 2016.

When do stocks start discounting this? How about right now!

You better pay attention to me, because I have been dead on right about how the stock market would play out after the August 24 flash crash.

That was my expectation of a narrowing triangle of higher lows and lower highs that reaches an apex exactly on Thursday, September 27 at 2:00 PM EDT.

After a false breakdown, the risk is we may get a stock melt up once the Fed announcement is out. It could kick off the six months a year we usually get seasonal strength for equities.

And this time, the follow up discussion will be far more important than the initial, algorithm driving headline.

Don?t get me wrong. We haven?t suddenly gotten a free pass on market turmoil.

Volatility is not about to plummet back to 10% and then sit there for four more years. We still have October to get through, which has a notorious reputation for ruining people?s lives and wealth.

However, my prediction for new all time high in American stock markets by the end of 2015 still stands.

Make your bets, and place your chips on the table please.

SPX 9-11-15

CalendarIt?s Really All About the Calendar

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Calendar-e1442274825707.jpg 384 500 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-09-15 01:07:072015-09-15 01:07:07The Coming Market Reaction to the Fed Decision
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Stress Testing the Mad Hedge Fund Trader Strategy

Diary, Newsletter

It is always a great idea to know how bomb proof your portfolio is.

Big hedge funds have teams of MIT educated mathematicians that constantly build models that stress test their holdings for every conceivable outcome.

WWIII? A Global pandemic? A 1,000 point flash crash? No problem. Analysts will tell you to the decimal point exactly how trading books will perform in every possible scenario.

The problem is that these are just predictions, which is code for ?educated guesses.?

The most notorious example of this was the Long Term Capital Management melt down where the best minds in the world constructed a portfolio that essentially vaporized in two weeks with a total loss.

S&P 500 volatility (VIX) exceeding $40? Never happen!

Oops. Better get those resumes out!

That?s why events like the Monday, August 24 1,000 flash crash are particularly valuable. While numbers and probabilities are great, they are not certainties. Nothing beats real world experience.

As markets are populated by humans, they will do things that no one can anticipate. Every machine has its programming shortcoming.

Given that standard, I think the Mad Hedge Fund Trader?s strategy did pretty well in the downdraft. I went into Monday with an aggressive ?RISK ON? portfolio that included the following:

MHFT Trading Book

The basic assumptions of this book were that the long term bull market has more to run, the housing sector would lead, interest rates would rise going into the September 17 Federal Reserve meeting, the dollar would remain strong, and that stock market volatility would stay within a 12%-20% range.

What we got was the sharpest one-day stock decline in history, a 28 basis point spike up in interest rates, a complete collapse in the dollar, and stock market volatility at an eye popping 53.85%.

Yikes! I couldn?t have been more wrong.

Now here?s the good news.

When we finally got believable options prices 30 minutes after the opening I priced my portfolio, bracing myself. My August performance plunged from +5.12% on Friday to -10%.

Hey, I never promised you a rose garden.

But that only took my performance for the year back to my June 17 figure, when I was up 23% on the year. In other words, I had only given up two months worth of profits, and that was at the low of the day.

I then sat back and watched the Dow rally an incredible 800 points. Now it was time to de risk. So I dumped my entire portfolio. The assumptions for the portfolio were no longer valid, so I unloaded the entire thing.

This was no time to be stubborn, proud, and full of hubris.

By the end of the day, I was down only -0.48% for August, and up +32.65% for the year.

Ask any manager, and they would have given their right arm to be down only -0.28% on August 24.

Of course, it helped that I had spent all month aggressively shorting the market into the crash, building up a nice 5.12% bank of profits to trade against. That is one of the reasons you subscribe to the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader.

The biggest hit came from my short position in the Japanese yen (FXY), which was just backing off of a decade low and therefore coiled for a sharp reversal. It cost me -4.85%.

My smallest loss was found in the short Treasury bond position (TLT), where I only shed 1.52%. But the (TLT) had already rallied 9 points going into the crash, so I was only able to eke out another 4 points to the upside on a flight to safety bid.

Lennar Homes gave me a 2.59% hickey, while the S&P 500 long I added only on Friday (after all, the market was then already extremely oversold) subtracted another 1.61%.

The big lesson here is that my short option hedges were worth their weight in gold. Without them, the losses on the Monday opening would have been intolerable, some two to three times higher.

You can come back from a 10% loss. I have done so many times in my life. A 30% loss is a completely different kettle of fish, and is life threatening.

For years, readers complained that my strategy was too conservative and cautious, really suited for the old man that I have become.

Readers were able to make a lot more money following my Trade Alerts through just buying the call options and skipping the hedge, or better yet, buying the futures.

I didn?t receive a single one of those complaints on Monday.

I?ll tell you who you didn?t hear from on Monday, and that was friends who pursued the moronic trading strategies you often find touted on the Internet.

That includes approaches like leveraged naked shorting of puts that are always advertising fantastic track records...when they work.

You didn?t hear from them because they were on the phone pleading with their brokers while they were forcibly liquidating portfolio showing 100% losses.

Any idiot can look like a genius shorting puts until it blows up in their face on a day like Monday and they lose everything they have. I know this because many of these people end up buying my service after getting wiped out by others.

I work on the theory that I am too old to go broke and start over. Besides, Morgan Stanley probably wouldn?t have me back anyway. It?s a different firm now.

Would I have made more money just sitting tight and doing nothing?

Absolutely!

But the risks involved would have been unacceptable. I would have failed my own test of not being able to sleep at night. That is not what this service is all about.

In any case, I know I can go back to the market and make money anytime I want. That makes the hits easier to swallow.

You can?t do this without any capital.

With the stress test of stress tests behind us, the rest of the years should be a piece of cake.

Good luck, and good trading.

FXY 8-27-15

TLT 8-27-15

LEN 8-27-15

SPY 8-27-15

John ThomasSometimes It Pays to Be Old

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/John-Thomas5-e1440701902348.jpg 322 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-08-28 01:07:202015-08-28 01:07:20Stress Testing the Mad Hedge Fund Trader Strategy
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

The Volatility Peak is In

Diary, Newsletter

Well, I certainly earned my crust of bread today.

This was truly one of those mornings when you couldn?t believe your screens.

When I went to sell short the Volatility Index (VIX), I discovered that it wasn?t trading. Volatility in fact didn?t trade at all for the first 15 minutes of Monday.

Unbelievable!

So I rushed to buy the short volatility ETF?s the Velocity Shares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN (XIV) and the ProShares Short VIX Short Term Futures ETN (SVXY). But they had already started running. It was basically a chase all day.

Despite the enormous volume, it was actually quite hard to trade on Monday. Apple (AAPL) at $92?

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 theoretical 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 finally did trade at opened at the $53 handle, a six-year high. The iPath S&P 500 VIX (VXX) Short Term Futures ETN actually doubled in three days!

Yikes!

Get this one right, and the profits you can realize are spectacular.

It gets better. If the top in volatility exactly coincides with the bottom in the ten year Treasury bond yields today at 1.92%, volatility could be headed back down to the 12% level where it will remain mired for months.

I double dare you to look at the charts below and tell me this isn?t happening.

Watch carefully for other confirming trends to affirm this trade is unfolding. Those would include a strong dollar, stocks, and oil, and a weak Japanese yen, Euro, and fixed income instruments of any kind.

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is a measure of the implied volatility of the S&P 500 stock index, which has been rallying hard since oil began its precipitous slide three weeks ago.

You may know of this from the many clueless 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 three years ago with the heady altitude of 47% several years ago.

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, which today is at 1,800. So a (VIX) of $14 means that the market expects the index to move 4.0%, or 72 S&P 500 points, over the next 30 days.

You get this by calculating $14/3.46 = 4.0%, 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 4.0%, 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 4.0% 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 sell short the (VIX) here at $24, you are picking up a derivative at a nice overbought level. Only prolonged, ?buy and hold? bull markets see volatility stay under $14 for any appreciable amount of time. That?s probably what we have now.

If you are a trader you can sell short the (VIX) futures somewhere over $20 and expect an easy profit sometime in the coming weeks. If we get another 5% rally somewhere along that way, that would do it.

If you don?t want to sell the (VIX) futures or options outright, then you can always sell short the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures ETN (VXX). Better yet, you can buy a short (VIX) ETN outright, the Velocity Shares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN (XIV).

If you make money on this trade, it will offset losses on other long positions.

No one who buys fire insurance ever complains when their house doesn?t burn down.

VXX 8-24-15

VXX 8-24-15

XIV 8-24-15

PHO 8-24-15 SVXY 8-24-15

VXX 12-17-14

TLT 12-17-14

XIV 12-17-14

tiger-swimming-2Make Volatility Your Friend, Not Your Enemy

 

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/tiger-swimming-2-e1440506453468.jpg 258 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-08-25 01:07:172015-08-25 01:07:17The Volatility Peak is In
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Cashing in on the Greek Crisis

Diary, Newsletter

Try as I may, there is absolutely no way to escape a financial crisis in the modern world anymore, not even in the dusty, remote Western Sahara village of Taghazout, Morocco.

There is an Ebola Virus outbreak 1,000 miles to the south, and 35 British tourists were massacred on a beach in neighboring Tunisia last week. There were exactly four passengers on my flight from Lisbon to Morocco.

Was it a warning, or a confirmation of hubris?

Starving stray dogs and cats wander the street, garbage lines the beach, and raw sewage seeps into the ocean. Rangy, two humped camels vainly await riders at the edge of town.

But satellite dishes sprout from the rooftop of even the most forlorn, impoverished, broken down cinder block structures, and the hum of the global markets is never more than a few channels away.

The CNBC here is available only in Arabic, and is fiercely competing with Omani soap operas and the Iraqi Business Channel (yes, despite ISIS, there is such a thing).

But it didn?t take me long to figure out that the people of Greece rejected the ECB latest bailout proposal by an overwhelming 61.5% to 38.5% margin.

It was no surprise to me.

You would think that voting against punishingly higher taxes and an excruciatingly longer recession was a no brainer. But the markets were expecting otherwise, and have been caught seriously wrong footed. Poor summer liquidity is exacerbating the moves.

My somewhat passable French enabled me to discern that the prices were taking it on the nose. Japan and China each dove 2%, while Australia and the Euro pared 1% apiece.

This was going to be a ?RISK OFF? day on steroids.

Suddenly, I smell opportunity everywhere.

Now we know the kneejerk response to an imminent Greek default.

However, the cold, harsh reality of the situation requires a little deeper analysis.

CNN was utterly useless, choosing instead to focus on the human side of the tragedy, the freshly impoverished Greek goat herder and the island hotel operator who can?t pay his staff.

No great insight there.

Greek citizens are now limited to withdrawing 60 Euros a day from an ATM, if they can find one that has any cash at all. To head off a certain run and Armageddon, the Greek banks have all been closed for a week, with no reopening in sight.

Thousands of foreign tourists are now stranded in the land of moussaka, retsina, and Zorba, cursing their vacation destination choice.

So I?ll refer to my May conversation with former Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, who ran the country from 2009 to 2011, and shepherded the country through the post financial crisis 2010 debacle.

His late father, Andreas, was also a Prime Minister, as was his grandfather, Georgio, who spent time in jail for his services, consider running this ungovernable country the family business.

To a large extent, the ECB (read the Germans) are in a subprime crisis entirely of their own making.

German banks provided funds to their Greek counterparts, initially to build the $8 billion 2000 Athens Olympics, which was almost entirely subcontracted to German engineering firms.

They then fueled the economic boom that followed, making possible the export of tens of thousands of Mercedes, BMW?s and Volkswagens. That bankrolled a major increase in the Greek standard of living, while adding several points to German GDP growth.

When dubious financial statements were presented to justify this lending binge, bankers simply winked, and looked the other way.

A decade and a half later, they are ?shocked, shocked? that some of the accompanying disclosures were inaccurate, as police inspector Claude Rains might have said in Casablanca (which, by the way, is only 400 miles north of here).

?Gambling in the casino? Perish the thought.? How do you say that in German?

The reality is that this is all a storm in a teacup. Accounting for only 2% of European GDP, it is neither here nor there whether the country stays or goes from the European Community or the Euro.

Total Greek debt to the ECB is now $3.5 billion, a drop in the bucket in the global scheme of things.

What?s more, this crisis is far less serious than the ones that occurred in 2010 and 2012. This time around, Greek bonds have already been taken off the books of German and French banks at cost, and placed with numerous multinational agencies, largely the ECB itself.

What is almost completely lacking here is private risk, unless you happen to own a Greek bank, or the shares of other Greek companies.

What?s more, all of this is happening in the face of a massive 60 billion a month ECB quantitative easing program. The amount Greece owes comes to less than two days worth of this amount.

Never take a liquidity crisis in the middle of a structural global cash glut too seriously.

Even this paltry amount can be easily refinanced by the International Monetary Fund on a slow day. That?s what they are there for.

This pales in comparison to the 39 billion euros spent to bail out the Spanish banking system a few years ago, or the $4 billion IMF rescue of the United Kingdom in 1976.

In the end, the amounts are sofa change to the Chinese, who are starved for high yield investments. It was they who nailed the top of the last European bond yield spike (on my advice, I might add), acting as the buyer of last resort then.

In the end this will be solved, as have all international debt crises since time immemorial, since the British seized the Suez Canal from the French as collateral for bad debts in 1882. Extend and pretend. Move debt maturities out another ten years and hope everything gets solved by then.

It always works.

What all of this does do is create a great buying opportunity for the assets not directly involved in this crisis, notably US equities. Modest over valuation has encumbered main indexes with declining volumes, narrowing breadth, and shrinking volatility for all of 2015.

At the very least, the Euro crisis du jour will present a second test of the (SPY) 200-day moving average at $205.74. The best case is that it gives us a real gift, a visit to a full 10% retreat to $193, a pullback whose ferociousness has not been seen since October.

That?s where you load the boat for a rally to new index highs at yearend.

You can expect similar moves in other assets classes.

In this scenario, volatility (VIX) will rocket to 30%. The Euro (FXE) collapses to $103 once more, and the Japanese yen (FXY) revisits $82. Treasury bonds (TLT) enjoy a flight to safety bid that takes yields at least back to 2.30%. Gold (GLD) and silver (SLV) do nothing, as usual.

For followers of my Trade Alert service, this is all a dream come true. Having made 26.71%, or much more, in the first half of this year, you now have the opportunity to repeat this feat in the second half.

Going into a crisis like this with 100% cash and only dry powder is every trader?s wildest fantasy. Make sure you let the current Greek debt crisis play out before you commit.

This is what you all pay me for. At least I?ll get something for suffering through the hell holes and gin joints of West Africa.

I think I?ll go give those camels some business.

SPX 7-2-15

TLT 7-2-15

VIX 7-2-15

FXE 7-2-15

George Papandreou

RetsinaRetsina

John Thomas

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/George-Papandreou.jpg 356 326 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-07-06 10:27:462015-07-06 10:27:46Cashing in on the Greek Crisis
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

Why Stocks Hated the May Nonfarm Payroll

Diary, Newsletter

When the US Department of Labor announced its blockbuster May nonfarm payroll showing a 280,000 gain, stocks behaved like the world had just ended.

The 32,000 in March and April upward revisions didn?t help either.

You would think data showing that the economy is improving much faster than many realized would be positive for ?RISK ON? equity investments.

It wasn?t.

Now, the laser focus is on the bond market, which is collapsing globally. The complete disappearance of liquidity is exacerbating the moves.

Bond traders are now hyper sensitive to any news of a stronger American economy, which will soon lead to higher interest rate rises by Janet Yellen?s Federal Reserve.

A world is ending, but not the one you think. The zero interest rate regime on which we have all become heavily addicted over the last eight years is about to go into the history books.

Welcome to the looking glass world of investment these days. Good new is bad news and bad news good.

Players are in a manic depressive mood, expecting the economy to plunge into recession one month, and then discounting a robust recovery the next.

Then there?s Greece, which threatens to default on its debt on alternate days, and then offers to pay on the others. This has prompted the Euro (FXE) to undergo more gyrations than a circus contortionist.

Not a friendly environment for a trader. Sturm und drang with no net movement in the indexes doesn?t pave the road to trading riches. Even staying long volatility (VIX) is not working, unless you have the fastest finger in Chicago.

This is why I am keeping the Mad Hedge Fund Trader model trading portfolio to an absolute minimum bare bones of positions, a single 10% weighting in the S&P 500 that I snapped up at the Friday lows. And even that one has me edgy.

After polling many of my most loyal, long-term readers, I learned that they would rather see a small number of great trades than a large number of positions that include a few losers.

So, cherry picking it is, at least, for now.

To say that the nonfarm was fantastic is something of an under statement.

Private nonfarm jobs jumped by a dynamic 262,000. High paying professional and business services employment increased by a runaway 63,000. Leisure and hospitality ramped up to 57,000. Health care picked up 47,000.

The big loser was mining (coal, gold, silver), which shed 17,000 jobs. Headline unemployment held steady at 5.5%, while average hourly earnings rose by 0.3%.

It was almost a perfect report.

It certainly reinforces my own forecast of a hot 3% GDP growth rate for the final three quarters of 2015. The question bedeviling traders and investors alike now is, ?How much of this growth is already discounted in today?s prices??

You almost wonder if stocks are tired of going up, which have been appreciating for more than six years. Stock buyers need a new story.

With a discount Euro beckoning, it sounds like this summer will be the best ever to take a long vacation.

UST10Y 6-6-15

SPX 6-6-15

INDU 6-6-15

IWM 6-6-15

Pogo StickLooks Like This is a Down Day

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Pogo-Stick.jpg 390 168 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-06-08 09:22:402015-06-08 09:22:40Why Stocks Hated the May Nonfarm Payroll
Mad Hedge Fund Trader

A Note on the Friday Options Expiration

Diary, Free Research, Newsletter

We have several options positions that expire on Friday, and I just want to explain to the newbies how to best maximize their profits.

These include:

The Currency Shares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY) February $84-$87 vertical bear put spread

The Gilead Sciences (GILD) February $87.50-$92.50 vertical bull call spread

The S&P 500 (SPY) February $199-$202 vertical bull call spread

My bets that (GILD) and the (SPY) would rise, and that the (FXY) would fall during January and February proved dead on accurate. We got a further kicker with the two stock positions in that we captured a dramatic plunge in volatility (VIX).

Provided that some 9/11 type event doesn?t occur today, all three positions should expire at their maximum profit point. In that case, your profits on these positions will amount to 13% for the (FXY), 19% for (GILD) and 20% for the (SPY).

This will bring us a fabulous 5.58% profit so far for February, and a market beating 6.11% for year-to-date 2015.

Many of you have already emailed me asking what to do with these winning positions. The answer is very simple. You take your left hand, grab your right wrist, pull it behind your neck and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. You don?t have to do anything.

Your broker (are they still called that?) will automatically use your long put position to cover the short put position, cancelling out the total holding. Ditto for the call spreads. The profit will be credited to your account on Monday morning, and he margin freed up.

If you don?t see the cash show up in you account on Monday, get on the blower immediately. Although the expiration process is now supposed to be fully automated, occasionally mistakes do occur. Better to sort out any confusion before losses ensue.

I don?t usually run positions into expiration like this, preferring to take profits two weeks ahead of time, as the risk reward is no longer that favorable.

But we have a ton of cash right now, and I don?t see any other great entry points for the moment. Better to keep the cash working and duck the double commissions. This time being a pig paid off handsomely.

If you want to wimp out and close the position before the expiration, it may be expensive to do so. Keep in mind that the liquidity in the options market disappears, and the spreads substantially widen, when a security has only hours, or minutes until expiration. This is known in the trade as the ?expiration risk.?

One way or the other, I?m sure you?ll do OK, as long as I am looking over your shoulder, as I will be.

This expiration will leave me with a very rare 100% cash position. I am going to hang back and wait for good entry points before jumping back in. It?s all about getting that ?buy low, sell high? thing going again.

There are already interesting trades setting up in bonds (TLT), the (SPY), the Russell 2000 (IWM), NASDAQ (QQQ), solar stocks (SCTY), oil (USO), and gold (GLD).

The currencies seem to have gone dead for the time being, so I?ll stay away.

Well done, and on to the next trade.

FXY 2-19-15

GILD 2-19-15

SPY 2-19-15

Pat on the backPat Yourself on the Back

https://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Pat-on-the-back-e1424375419249.jpg 259 400 Mad Hedge Fund Trader https://madhedgefundtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/cropped-mad-hedge-logo-transparent-192x192_f9578834168ba24df3eb53916a12c882.png Mad Hedge Fund Trader2015-02-20 01:04:322015-02-20 01:04:32A Note on the Friday Options Expiration
Page 31 of 34«‹2930313233›»

tastytrade, Inc. (“tastytrade”) has entered into a Marketing Agreement with Mad Hedge Fund Trader (“Marketing Agent”) whereby tastytrade pays compensation to Marketing Agent to recommend tastytrade’s brokerage services. The existence of this Marketing Agreement should not be deemed as an endorsement or recommendation of Marketing Agent by tastytrade and/or any of its affiliated companies. Neither tastytrade nor any of its affiliated companies is responsible for the privacy practices of Marketing Agent or this website. tastytrade does not warrant the accuracy or content of the products or services offered by Marketing Agent or this website. Marketing Agent is independent and is not an affiliate of tastytrade. 

Legal Disclaimer

There is a very high degree of risk involved in trading. Past results are not indicative of future returns. MadHedgeFundTrader.com and all individuals affiliated with this site assume no responsibilities for your trading and investment results. The indicators, strategies, columns, articles and all other features are for educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. Information for futures trading observations are obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but we do not warrant its completeness or accuracy, or warrant any results from the use of the information. Your use of the trading observations is entirely at your own risk and it is your sole responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of the information. You must assess the risk of any trade with your broker and make your own independent decisions regarding any securities mentioned herein. Affiliates of MadHedgeFundTrader.com may have a position or effect transactions in the securities described herein (or options thereon) and/or otherwise employ trading strategies that may be consistent or inconsistent with the provided strategies.

Copyright © 2025. Mad Hedge Fund Trader. All Rights Reserved. support@madhedgefundtrader.com
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • FAQ
Scroll to top