volatility

By Win Thin and Ilan Solot from yesterday What has changed? In short, pretty much everything. The FOMC meeting and the market reaction has fed into a deeper re-pricing of assets globally. The selloff in the EM space has been…

Yesterday, Ben Bernanke said that the Fed would start to wind down it's QE program sometime this summer as I indicated early last week I believed the timetable would be. Market pundits believe these remarks triggered a sell-off in global…

In spite of the drop in VIX, there is no confidence that the recent market stability is sustainable over the longer term.

The VIX index hit a multi-year low today (it went below 14.1 this morning).

The S&P 500 volatility index - the VIX - is a measurement of volatility expectations. It has fallen 50% since the (latest) agreement to save the euro was announced. If the VIX falls to 18, call options are worth considering.

Volatility tends to drop when market risk is building up and leverage is rising, luring investors into complacency. Indeed, the lower volatility justifies investors taking on more leverage; if volatility has dropped by a third, why not take…

We are in a mid-cycle slowdown not dissimilar to the ones we experienced in 1995 or 2005. I am remarkably sanguine about the ability of policy makers to induce a cyclical recovery via fiscal and monetary stimulus. And, of course things…