Between the practice of trading and the academic empirical studies lies the sector rotation. On on hand, most evidence about business-cycle rotation suggests it doesn’t work whereas, on the other, practitioners have employed value-based sector rotation with some success. After a short review, my suggestion for the coming months…
The fluctuations of equity prices are attributed to the competition of firms for the limited funds of investors; as a result, demand and supply achieve the equilibrium summarized in the most competitive expected rate of return adjusted for risk.
The US markets are moving out of a distribution phase consisiting of lateral movements and indecision in market sentiment: will it result in a mark-down and in a recession?
Options are often used to reduce or eliminate the risk of holding one particular investment position by taking another position. In general, a long option position is a speculation that something will happen (bear, bull, lateral) whereas a short option is a speculation that something will NOT happen (not bear, not bull, not lateral).
CBOE Implied Correlation, Volatility of Volatility, and Skew are measures incorporating option market information and expectations about the S&P500 volatility in the near future.
The implied volatility is generally equal to or significantly greater than the forecasted volatility; for instance, the BSM implied volatility is, in general, an upward biased estimator. Indeed, by selling implied volatility a risk premium is provided because of the many expected and unexpected events that may occur. Moreover, market microstructure posits that implied volatility should be biased high because market makers profit from the bid-ask spread in the options by slightly raising their quotes (i.e., going slight long volatility exposure particularly on the downside). However, this absolutely doesn’t mean that it is always possible to profit by selling implied volatility
Option Pricing. An option is a contract entitling the holder to buy or sell designated security at or within a certain period of time at a particular price. Options contracts are characterized by a nonlinear payoff because the price depends on a nonlinear function of the underlying. Thus, it is impossible to price without a model for the underlying but the assumptions of mathematical finance (not moving the market; liquidity, jumps; shorting; fractional quantities; no transaction costs) substantially make difficult to determine a single model always valid with the changing market conditions.
Financial derivatives are often used for commodities, like corn, oil, gasoline, or gold, and for currencies, often the U.S. Dollar abd the Euro. However, there are derivatives based on stocks, bonds, interest rates, and indices. Companies use derivatives to lower their operational risk for the delivery of raw materials, the changes in exchange rates or in interest rates. Trading requires a small down payment (margin) and usually consists of rolling positions (contracts are liquidated by another derivative before coming to term).
Safe heaven portfolio can be a wise option considering 2019 marks the 11th year to an already-extended bull market which started in in the aftermath of the great financial crisis. It has been a long and very rewarding run for all investors… Especially REIT investors who have continued their long streak of market outperformance. Since we are likely to hit a recession sooner rather than later (1-2 years), tracking a safe heaven portfolio is important.
Inventories have been studied by macro-economist for their role in the business cycles (Abramovitz 1950) and their relation with corporate profits (Mitchell 1951, Lucas 1977) and with the volatility of cash flows (Fazzari, Hubbard et al. 1988), both key leading indicators of the state of the economy (Carpenter, Fazzari et al. 1994); other evidence suggests their implications on the general level of the economy in case of financial shocks because of erroneous forecasts (Bernanke and Gertler 1989, Bernanke, Gertler et al. 1996) or their limited efficiency in collateralization (Berk 2014).
