The Cboe did not create the VIX® as an academic exercise, or as a service to stock market prognosticators everywhere. They created it because they wanted to make money on volatility. It took them two tries, but the Cboe succeeded in developing a volatility index that forms the backbone of a host of volatility products. The Cboe offers some of these products, but other companies have …
It was not obvious (at least to me) that volatility theoretically scales with the square root of time (sqrt[t]). For example, if the market’s daily volatility is 0.5%, then theoretically the correct value of volatility for two days is the square root of 2 times the daily volatility (0.5% * 1.414 = 0.707%), or for a 5 day stretch 0.5% * sqrt(5) = 1.118%. This …
UPDATE Credit Suisse has terminated XIV due to a greater than 80% drop in its indicative value on 5-Feb-2018. The final payout was $5.99 per share. The last day of trading was the 15th of February. For more on what caused XIV’s crash see this post, for more info on the XIV termination process see this post. ————————————————————————————————————————————— VelocityShares’ XIV and its sister fund ZIV …
When I first saw a chart similar to the one below in Business Insider I was immediately suspicious. For example I knew that May through September of 2009 was a period of rapid growth (21%) yet that surge did not seem to show up on the bottom curve (green)—which shows the performance of staying in the market only May through September. It turns out …
It’s been about 7 months since my article on The Modified Davis Method first appeared, so it’s time for an update. Here is the original chart updated through 3/28/14. As before, the top (white) line is the method’s results; the yellow line is the Value Line/Russell 2000 series; the green line is the S&P 500 for reference. The method is still 100% long after the last …
