Paper: Volatilidad explosiva

Explosive Volatility: A Model of Financial Contagion

This paper proposes a model of financial contagion that accounts for explosive, mutually exciting shocks to market volatility. We fit the model using country-level data during the European sovereign debt crisis, which has its roots in the period 2008–2010, and was continuing to affect global markets as of October, 2011. Our analysis shows that existing volatility models are unable to explain two key stylized features of global markets during presumptive contagion periods: shocks to aggregate market volatility can be sudden and explosive, and they are associated with specific directional biases in the cross-section of country-level returns. Our model repairs this deficit by assuming that the random shocks to volatility are heavy-tailed and correlated cross-sectionally, both with each other and with returns.
We find evidence for significant contagion effects during the major EU crisis periods of May 2010 and August 2011, where contagion is defined as excess correlation in the residuals from a factor model incorporating global and regional market risk factors. Some of this excess correlation can be explained by quantifying the impact of shocks to aggregate volatility in the cross-section of expected returns—but only, it turns out, if one is extremely careful in accounting for the explosive nature of these shocks. We show that global markets have time-varying cross-sectional sensitivities to these shocks, and that high sensitivities strongly predict periods of financial crisis. Moreover, the pattern of temporal changes in correlation structure between volatility and returns is readily interpretable in terms of the major events of the periods in question.

Link al Paper

Gráfico du Jour: no diría Bipolar…

(Fuente: The Big Picture)

Tabla du Jour: un VIX de Lunes…

(Fuente: Yahoo Finance)

Paper: Curtosis y predicción de retornos

Do Realized Skewness and Kurtosis Predict the Cross-Section of Equity Returns?

Abstract: 
Yes. We use intraday data to compute weekly realized variance, skewness and kurtosis for individual equities and assess whether this week’s realized moments predict next week’s stock returns in the cross-section. We sort stocks each week according to their past realized moments, form decile portfolios and analyze subsequent weekly returns. We find a very strong negative relationship between realized skewness and next week’s stock returns, and a positive relationship between realized kurtosis and next week’s stock returns. We do not find a strong relationship between realized volatility and stock returns. A trading strategy that buys stocks in the lowest realized skewness decile and sells stocks in the highest realized skewness decile generates an average weekly return of 43 basis points with a t-statistic of 8.91. A similar strategy that buys stocks with high realized kurtosis and sells stocks with low realized kurtosis produces a weekly return of 16 basis points with a t-statistic of 2.98. Our results are robust across sample periods, portfolio weightings, and proxies for firm characteristics, and they are not captured by the Fama-French and Carhart factors.

Link al Paper

Gráfico du Jour: S&P 500 ¿tranquilo?

(Fuente: Bespoke Investment)

Paper: Opciones sobre ETFs y Volatilidad Implicita

The Implied Volatility of ETF and Index Options

Abstract: 
We examine the option-implied volatility of the three most liquid ETFs (Diamonds, Spiders, and Cubes) and their respective tracking indices (Dow 30, S&P 500, and NASDAQ 100). We find that volatility smiles for ETF options are more pronounced than for index options, primarily because deep-in-themoney ETF options have considerably higher implied volatility than deep-in-the-money index options. The observed difference in implied volatility is not due to a difference between the realized return distributions of the underlying ETFs and indices. Differences in implied volatility for ETF and index options also do not appear to be explained by discrepancies in net buying pressure, as theorized by Bollen and Whaley (2004).

Link al Paper

Finanzas 101: FX risk reversal

Debido al aumento de volatilidad en el Forex, un concepto interesante para aprender es el Risk Reversal.

(…) This indicator represents a proxy for investor concerns that (currency) will collapse suddenly, and its high level suggests that this is indeed a growing concern. (…)

Según Investopedia

In foreign-exchange trading, risk reversal is the difference in volatility (delta) between similar call and put options, which conveys market information used to make trading decisions.

Para Sala de Inversiones

Muestra la diferencia en volatilidad, y por tanto en precio, entre las puts y las calls sobre las opciones out of the money más liquidas cotizadas en el mercado al contado. Los valores positivos indican que las calls son más caras que las puts (la protección al alza en el subyacente spot es relativamente más cara), mientras que los valores negativos indican que las puts son más caras que las calls (la protección a la baja en el subjacente spot es más cara). Los cambios significativos pueden indicar un cambio en las expectativas de mercado para la dirección futura del tipo de cambio de divisas subyacente spot.

Conforme a Global Market Financial Institute,

The market has established a 25 (0.25) delta benchmark for risk reversal quotes.

Listo con las definiciones básicas, ahora el DB tiene una muy buena guía-del 2006- para sacarle provecho al tema. 

 

 

 

Invertir en Volatilidad

Schaeffers Research tiene un post donde analiza un trabajo de Morningstar donde compara dos portfolios uno con equity y cash y otro que tiene esos componentes más derivados del VIX. Para concluir con:

Well, that’s a downer. I think the point would be not to leverage, and accept the lower return/lower risk. Or, simply allocate less to volatility.

But truthfully, it’s more about the concepts here than actually replicating this portfolio. Remember — it’s all simulated to begin with. We only know how these actual volatility derivatives behaved in the last five years; the simulations have their own margins of error.

Basically, this all tells me that properly allocated and relatively frequently hedged VXZ provides a decent portfolio hedge over time.

Gráfico du Jour: VIX y su numerología…baja

(Fuente: Barrons*)

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*: Esta fuente, tiene un buen debate sobre el VIX. Y Condor Options tambien tiene algo para decir al respecto.

Fun & Finance: capítulo 7, Volatilidad

En esta septima entrega -y gracias a los escenarios virtuales- Gaston visita a Leo. Quien le explica sobre Volatilidad, como se mide y que estrategias hay para tradearla.

Para un mayor disfrute de este video, le recomendamos que lo vea desde Vimeo directamente en Alta Definición.