Volatility

With the end of Operation Twist's USD volatility repression, fading LTRO benefits, and various event risks (from elections to sovereign refinancings and bank downgrades/collateral calls) occurring, the gap between EURUSD implied volatility and European equity implied volatility is becoming excessive. FX volatility is extremely low (complacency high) but relative to equities it seems to offer a low-cost-long-vol bet on the chance of a risk-flare occurring. The last two times this has occurred (in the last year), EURUSD implied vol has rapidly caught up to equity's risk - why not third time the charm?

"Either someone likes buying high and selling low, or they have figured out how to significantly increase the volatility in a stock." On May 2, 2012 beginning right at market close (16:00 Eastern) and continuing for about 54 seconds, an HFT algo ran that significantly increased volatility and impacted at least 34 stocks. We think this was either a test of an algorithm someone is getting ready to deploy during market hours, or that this algo already runs during market hours, but is much harder to detect amidst the huge volume of market data noise.

Anybody watching the EUR/CHF exchange rate this year was wondering why the volatility the pair saw last year had completely left. The pair slowly fell from 1.2156 over 1.2040 at the end of Q1 to 1.2014 today. FX traders hoped on a hike of the floor from 1.20 to 1.25, as many Swiss politicians and companies requested. Banks sold masses of Long EUR/CHF certificates and options. The retail market measured in SSI (Speculative Sentiment Index) was 96% long EUR/CHF.  We saw the typical Forex web sites telling regularly their masses of followers that the protagonists of these web sites were going long EUR/CHF in the hope that the SNB is going to act. This happened at multiple critical levels, at 1.2070, 1.2050, at 1.2030 and finally at 1.2010. The small FX trader was begging for months that the SNB would finally intervene. When all these people were long EUR/CHF, who was actually short, when the exchange rate continued to fall ? We speculated that some big accounts wanted their clients to be knocked out with their EUR/CHF longs, we thought that Swiss pension funds and big investors continued to repatriate their foreign funds.  What did the SNB ? Did they support the hopes of the masses, of all these SNB rooters ? But on the back-door of all this rhetoric they did the complete opposite: The central bank was happy to get rid of their Euros at a higher price than the floor they had set in September 2011 !

Europe's VIX broke back above 28% today, sending it to its highest level relative to US VIX since 2003 and almost three standard-deviations above its long-run norm. So what, we hear you cry - didn't you see European PMI and unemployment and the glorious ISM data in the US yesterday? To which we counter, US equities and European equities are not diverging dramatically, US investment grade credit and European investment grade credit are not diverging dramatically, and macro-economically the two regions have been trending down together in terms of negative surprises. We assume that VIX is holding relatively low to V2X (Europe's VIX) due to market expectations that The Fed will be first to flinch in the game of global thermonuclear money-printing war; however, until we see a significant drop in US equities (and therefore the implicit risk flare and rise in VIX), we suspect Bernanke is cornered. With VIX relatively 'cheap' to its realized vol (as we noted here), perhaps Europe-US Vol-compression trade (ahead of NFP at least) is worth a look - or more simply if you are bullish Europe, sell vol (as its the richest asset) or bearish US, buy vol (as its the most out of line).

More troubles for the nat gas world, as flashing red headlines confirm the inexorable trend which started years ago with the departure of more and more hedge fund titans who no longer have an advantage in a world where only liquidity matters.

• NATURAL GAS HEDGE FUND MANAGER JOHN ARNOLD TELLS INVESTORS HE IS CLOSING CENTAURUS ENERGY MASTER FUND - RTRS

Why is this not a surprise? Simple. As the FT reported earlier, take virtually everything you know about the nuances, the complexities, the intricacies of commodity trading... and shove it. But don't forget to thank the Chairman first, because the last bastion of "veteran advantage" in what used to be a rational trading arena, is now gone.

Every quarter as part of its refunding announcement, the Office of Debt Management together with the all important Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, which as noted previously is basically Wall Street's conduit telling the Treasury what to do, releases its Fiscal Quarterly Report which is for all intents and purposes the most important presentation of any 3 month period, containing not only 70 slides worth of critical charts about the fiscal status of the country, America's debt issuance, its funding needs, the structure of the Treasury portfolio, but more importantly what future debt supply and demand needs look like, as well as various sundry topics which will shape the debate between Wall Street and Treasury execs for the next 3 months: some of the fascinating topics touched upon are fixed income ETFs, algo trading in Treasurys, and finally the implications of High Frequency trading - a topic which has finally made it to the highest levels of executive discussion. It is presented in its entirety below (in a non-click bait fashion as we respect readers' intelligence), although we find the following statement absolutely priceless: "Anticipation of central bank behavior has become a significant driver of market sentiment." This is coming from the banks and Treasury. Q.E.D.

As we suggested yesterday, the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (basically Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and the rest of the buy and sell side) did indeed come out with a unanimous decision, having decided to recommend FRNs. This simply means that Wall Street is either desperate to telegraph a surge in short-term rates, or, even worse, if actually anticipating a surge in short-term rates and is doing all it can to hedge before it happens. Nonetheless, "system limitations would prevent any possible issuance of FRNs until 2013" while those wondering what the reference rate will be will have no answer for a while: "In discussing the best index, the member recommendations were divided, with 4 members voting for Treasury bills, 3 members voting for a general collateral rate, and 6 members voting for the federal funds effective rate." Finally, anyone wondering why the market acted odd yesterday, i.e., experienced a freak sell off in the afternoon, the reason is that Brian Sack was also present at the TBAC meeting, and away from his trusty BBG terminal.

The 20-day realized volatility of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) has more than doubled in the last two months from a low near 7% to the current level over 15%. At the same time, implied vol (akin to VIX) has dropped 2-3vols during that period and almost 5 vols in the last two weeks - nearing its multi-year lows once again. For the first time this year though, 3-month-implied volatility is trading below realized 20-day volatility and while they are apples-to-oranges to some extent (forward-looking vs historical), the 'cheapness' of volatility may well be enough to encourage hedgers back in - especially on a day when stocks pop unexpectedly. What is more worrisome though is almost exact replica that implied- and realized-vol are following when compared to last year in the run-up to the big mid-summer swoon as complacency is back it seems.

By way of post-mortem of this afternoon's epic Paul vs Paul Bloomberg TV cage-match, we reflect on the various headlines the two gentlemen made during the event and in the context of the credibility with which one of the gentlemen discusses his ability to manage the world and the 'ease' with which he and his henchmen can control inflation (and yet an unmanaged economy is subject to 'extreme volatility'), we remind readers of the post-WWII years and the extreme swings in purchasing power that their so-called managed economy created. As ever it appears the mutually-assured-destruction fall-back premise of Keynesian Krugman is trumped by the fact-based method of the more Pragmatic Paul.

• *KRUGMAN SAYS UNMANAGED ECONOMY SUBJECT TO "EXTREME VOLATILITY"
• *PAUL SAYS FED IS LENDER OF LAST RESORT FOR POLITICIANS
• *KRUGMAN SAYS U.S. ECONOMY IS "PERSISTENTLY DEPRESSED"
• *RON PAUL: FED HAS DESTROYED 98% OF DOLLAR'S VALUE SINCE 1913

While the most commonly held perspective on the aging demographic in the US is a retiring Boomer generation that is increasingly risk-averse (rotating to fixed income) and in desperate need of a growing segment of the healthcare pie, it appears that this may not be the entire picture. The data shows, via UBS Larry Hatheway, that in fact asset preferences do not change much by age cohort and therefore is not the driving reason behind a secular rotation out of stocks per se (as opposed to more simple reasons such as mistrust) and more notably the perception of an increased longevity could actually incentivize older investors to extend investment horizons (whether in stocks or fixed income). There does, however, remain a clear correlation (intuitive rather than causal if one is splitting hairs) between equity valuations (P/E ratios) and the older cohort (implying expectations of dropping equity valuations). Critically though, it appears from the data that older investors are not more risk averse. There is one further issue that is quietly emerging and that is US fertility data which points to an 'eventual' rejuvenation of US society - which could eventually shift the demographic influence back in the opposite direction. The simple take-away is that while old people continue to desperately cling to wealth preservation in their longer-than-expected lives, with their notably higher-than-average net worths, there will be an increasing pressure to stealthily tax part the aged of their wealth to cover the costs of a growing and even more state-dependent youth demographic that is emerging. Forget the 99% versus the 1%, it appears the new and more clearly-defined class warfare could well be the old versus the young.

Stock World Weekly visits w/ Mark Hanna, Washington's Blog, Allan Trends, Lee Adler and Pharmboy. 

PIMCO's Bill Gross spent a longer-than-soundbite period discussing QE3, the chance of a US double-dip, and Europe's ongoing dysfunction with Trish Regan on Bloomberg Television this afternoon. Given more than his typically limited-to-ten-second thoughts some other media outlets appear to prefer, the old-new-normal-bond-king believes the Fed will resist another round of quantitative easing in the short-term but "if unemployment begins to rise for two-to-three months then QE3 is back on". Noting that investors should focus on nominal GDP growth tomorrow, he goes on to dismiss the idea that the US can decouple from a troubled Europe pointing the political dysfunction between the Germans and the rest as greater than the polarity between Democrats and Republicans here at home. Preferring to play a slightly levered long bet on low rates holding for a longer-period, he like MBS (as we have discussed in the past) but does not see the 10Y yield dropping precipitously from here though he does echo our thoughts entirely in his view of the 'flow' being more critical than the 'stock' when it comes to the Fed's balance sheet and hence the June end-of-Twist may be a volatile period for all asset classes.

The always-outspoken Doug Casey addresses a broader view of taxation and its costs to both individuals and society in general in this interview with Louis James. The Taxman can and will come for you, no matter how great or small the amount of tax he expects to extract from you. The IRS can impound your assets, take your computers, freeze your accounts, and make life just about impossible for you, while you struggle to defend yourself against their claims and keep the rest of your life going. But people should not just bow down and lick the boots of our masters. They can and should do everything they can to pay as little in taxes as possible. This is an ethical imperative; we must starve the beast.

A 2.7% gain in the NASDAQ, obviously dramatically aided and abetted by the squeeze-fest in AAPL +9% from last night's close, was the best gain in over four months for the tech-heavy index but still leaves it lagging the Dow (by over 2%) and S&P 500 (by over 1.5%) from the 4/9 highs in Apple. At the other end of the spectrum in the real economy, CAT's less than rosy outlook, saw it suffer its largest drop in 7 months dragging an impressive 37pts out of the Dow's lagging but positive performance on the day (now positive from the 4/9 Apple Top day). Of course the Apple-exuberance which seemed enough for the entire world's risk-asset markets to decide that everything is fixed started the day off gap higher in the US and late-to-the-game retail pushed equities higher out of the date this morning as the rest of risk-assets were generally steady. Europe's close seemed to have only minimal impact as everyone was focused on the FOMC statement and Bernanke's presser. Between the FOMC and the Bernanke conference, Gold, stocks, and the USD knee-jerked and retraced but Treasuries remained worse (higher in yield by 3bps or so). Once Bernanke began his quaking tenor, Gold pushed higher, Treasuries lower, stocks higher and the USD lower as hints of QE back on the table were dribbled in between defensive tacks on biflationary concerns. This QE-specific action was accompanied by low volumes though (as usual) but volatility did compress (a la typical QE trades) with VIX closing below 17% - its lowest in over a month and near its largest divergence from European volatility (V2X). Commodities in general lagged early then recovered as USD sold off on QE chatter from Ben - Silver underperformed on the day but outperformed notably off its lows after testing below $30 for the first time in 3 months. Treasuries pulled back positively off their high yields of the day in the late afternoon ending the week with the short-end (out to 5Y) flat and 10s/30s 2.5bps higher in yield. HYG was a dramatic high-beta outperformer today - now green for the month - even as HY and IG credit lagged the ebullience in stocks (though did improve to two-week highs). ES (the S&P 500 e-mini future) closed above its 50DMA on average volume today with some heavy and larger average trade size into the close ending just above Friday's highs - even after the dismal US data (Durable Goods) and Europe's issues this morning.

For the first time in over two months, Apple's implied volatility is now trading back below its realized volatility as its share price explodes 10% higher and overall implied volatility falls back to a more normalized level of the last six months. It seems, just as in the few months leading up to January's earnings report, that option-hedgers were very actively bidding up protection only to see it crushed on the miraculous realization of exponential growth. Will we repeat the same path in the next three months as implied volatility is once again at 3-month lows relative to realized vol?