January 16, 2018 | Daily JAM, Short Term, Volatility |
U.S. stocks came racing out of the gates on strength in overseas markets with the Dow Jones Industrial Average trading at 26,000–283 points higher than the Friday close at one point during the day. Then came the plunge. As indexes gave back all their gains and then some. The  Dow closed 10.3 points lower at 25,793. The Standard & Poor’s 500 traded above 2,800 for the first time and then fell to close down 0.4% for the day. The NASDAQ Composite also finished lower on the day. This kind of intraday reversal is never a sign of market health.
November 18, 2017 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend |
The problem for the market isn’t that there are signs of a big move to the downside. Instead it’s the absence of clear signs about either direction at all that has the market worried–especially as we head into a short holiday week with really only two full days of trading.
October 29, 2017 | Daily JAM, Friday Trick or Trend, Volatility |
Last week’s drop has again led to the question “So where’s the volatility?” After all it’s not like there aren’t dangers in this world that might lead a trader to bid up the price of protecting against those dangers. It’s certainly not in the VIX, which looks for volatility in the S&P 500 future. But there’s actually plenty out there. It’s just all in the Treasury futures market where traders are hedging their bets on 10-year and 30-year Treasuries big time. The implied volatility in those futures markets has soared in the last couple of weeks.
September 26, 2017 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term, Volatility |
There’s certainly no visible sign of a big surge in stock market volatility. Yesterday, when the news was full of threats and counter-threats of war with North Korea and when the tech sector dropped, the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) climbed all of 12.2%. Today the VIX has retreated, falling 0.98% as of 3 p.m. New York time to 10.11. But this doesn’t mean nothing is going on in the volatility market or that big money traders aren’t placing bets on a spike in volatility.
September 25, 2017 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Short Term |
It’s not surprising that the major U.S. stock indexes are down. So far today the North Korean foreign minister has said that President Donald Trump’s threats against his country amount to a declaration of war, and that North Korea has the right to shoot down U.S. warplanes even if they aren’t actually flying in North Korean airspace. Amazing that the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index was off only 0.38% as of 3 p.m. New York time.
September 12, 2017 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need, VIX |
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. I launched this new feature on JubakAM.com on December 1. It runs only on JAM and won’t appear anywhere else. For example, 10:20 a.m.: It looks like China’s monetary authorities are starting to relax about the yuan.
August 25, 2017 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
These two risk indexes, the VIX and the SKEW, are showing very different views of the market with a SKEW that rose near record highs last week indicating fear of a low-probability event that would send the market down 10% or more. Meanwhile a low VIX is signaling complacency.
August 21, 2017 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
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August 18, 2017 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Yesterday, a rumor that Gary Cohn, the administration’s chief economist, would be leaving the White House contributed to the nerves that pushed the Standard & Poor’s 500 lower by 1.54%. (The rumor has been denied by Cohn’s office.) Today a story in the New York Times that President Donald Trump has decided to remove Stephen Bannon, chief White House strategist and the administration’s most important link to the alt-right, has contributed to a modest bounce in U.S. stocks. As of 1 p.m. New York time the S&P 500 ws ahead 0.27%.
August 17, 2017 | Daily JAM, Short Term |
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August 17, 2017 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index closed down 1.54% today and the NASDAQ Composite fell 1.94%. Gold picked up 0.87%. The CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) broke above 15 again soaring 31.94% on the day. There was just too much for the markets to cope with today. On the fundamental front U.S. initial claims for unemployment dropped again in the last week
August 12, 2017 | Uncategorized |
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