Importance to Enter In a Financial Market after a Proper Analysis
Macro Vol Commentary-
The normal summer doldrums were interrupted toward the end of the month with Facebook earnings providing a slight hiccup to the domestic equity market vol crush that marked the first few weeks of July. We believe one of the main catalysts driving the slight pick-up in realized volatility was an earnings miss from the social networking behemoth that caused a subsequent -20% sell-off in the stock. This move seemed to ruin the persistently over-crowded “long FAANG” trade that we saw investors aggressively rotate into post the February “Volpocalypse”. We believe this sparked an unwind of investors who had entered into the trade lacking major conviction and resulted in the Nasdaq dropping more than -4% over the last few trading days of the month. As a result, we saw a bid in implied Volatility Hedge Funds overall and a significant jump in Nasdaq implied vol, ending the month trading at a more than 6pt premium to the VIX, suggesting very expensive cost to own US tech volatility going forward. That being said, we believe that the relatively muted broad market vol response since then suggests relatively low probability of a sustained follow through and perhaps a return to the “dog days of summer” on the horizon for August. European vol markets were slightly less eventful, with a potential Europe-US tariff ceasefire buoying European markets and driving implied volatility lower in both the front and long ends of the curve. This news, along with improving economic growth amidst extremely dovish European Central Bank led to a flattening of SX5E skew and most European implied vol indicators moving into bullish territory. Meanwhile in Asia, NKY volatility seems rich, perhaps signifying low confidence in the BoJ having the tools at its disposal to be able to navigate through any sustained period of turmoil.
Cross-Asset Volatility Monitor-
This month, we introduce our 20 factor Cross-Asset Volatility Monitor which seeks to identify various global assets that have 1-month implied volatilities suggesting larger than normal market moves in the left (downside) & right (upside) tails*. We think that this screen represents a potentially efficient way to identify the opportunity set available at any given time in global volatility markets. The monitor looks at the implied volatilities of a 1-month 10-delta put option and call option for each of the 20 assets and highlights the most expensive/cheap as relative to the previous month. The dark shaded area signifies what we believe are expensively priced tails as compared to the realized volatility of last month and the light shaded area represents potentially fairly priced tails. We think that the significance of the results of the monitor allow the team at Infinity Q to quickly identify at any given time during the day which assets provide attractive trading opportunities due to volatility levels that are implying either abnormally large positive or negative market moves through either over-priced call or put options. As an example, this month it seems some of the cheap sourcing of convexity continues to come from global FX markets while High Yield Credit appears to be abnormally expensive in both the left & right tails. Going forward, we hope to use this as a useful tool for Infinity Q investors & prospective investors to tap in to how we think about the various volatility markets and where we can either buy (or sell) cheap (or expensive) volatility.
For more information on Hedge Funds NYC mutual fund NYC, Quantitative Hedge Fund and volatility hedge funds, visit Infinityq.com.
The normal summer doldrums were interrupted toward the end of the month with Facebook earnings providing a slight hiccup to the domestic equity market vol crush that marked the first few weeks of July. We believe one of the main catalysts driving the slight pick-up in realized volatility was an earnings miss from the social networking behemoth that caused a subsequent -20% sell-off in the stock. This move seemed to ruin the persistently over-crowded “long FAANG” trade that we saw investors aggressively rotate into post the February “Volpocalypse”. We believe this sparked an unwind of investors who had entered into the trade lacking major conviction and resulted in the Nasdaq dropping more than -4% over the last few trading days of the month. As a result, we saw a bid in implied Volatility Hedge Funds overall and a significant jump in Nasdaq implied vol, ending the month trading at a more than 6pt premium to the VIX, suggesting very expensive cost to own US tech volatility going forward. That being said, we believe that the relatively muted broad market vol response since then suggests relatively low probability of a sustained follow through and perhaps a return to the “dog days of summer” on the horizon for August. European vol markets were slightly less eventful, with a potential Europe-US tariff ceasefire buoying European markets and driving implied volatility lower in both the front and long ends of the curve. This news, along with improving economic growth amidst extremely dovish European Central Bank led to a flattening of SX5E skew and most European implied vol indicators moving into bullish territory. Meanwhile in Asia, NKY volatility seems rich, perhaps signifying low confidence in the BoJ having the tools at its disposal to be able to navigate through any sustained period of turmoil.
Cross-Asset Volatility Monitor-
This month, we introduce our 20 factor Cross-Asset Volatility Monitor which seeks to identify various global assets that have 1-month implied volatilities suggesting larger than normal market moves in the left (downside) & right (upside) tails*. We think that this screen represents a potentially efficient way to identify the opportunity set available at any given time in global volatility markets. The monitor looks at the implied volatilities of a 1-month 10-delta put option and call option for each of the 20 assets and highlights the most expensive/cheap as relative to the previous month. The dark shaded area signifies what we believe are expensively priced tails as compared to the realized volatility of last month and the light shaded area represents potentially fairly priced tails. We think that the significance of the results of the monitor allow the team at Infinity Q to quickly identify at any given time during the day which assets provide attractive trading opportunities due to volatility levels that are implying either abnormally large positive or negative market moves through either over-priced call or put options. As an example, this month it seems some of the cheap sourcing of convexity continues to come from global FX markets while High Yield Credit appears to be abnormally expensive in both the left & right tails. Going forward, we hope to use this as a useful tool for Infinity Q investors & prospective investors to tap in to how we think about the various volatility markets and where we can either buy (or sell) cheap (or expensive) volatility.
For more information on Hedge Funds NYC mutual fund NYC, Quantitative Hedge Fund and volatility hedge funds, visit Infinityq.com.
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