I am neither an alarmist nor a conspiracy theorist, but I have been extremely concerned about Peak Oil since long before I took on the VIX a pet project. Now that I occasionally find myself as an unofficial source of all things VIX and volatility, it seems I am also perpetually on the lookout for storm clouds on the horizon.

Where will the next big threat come from? Commercial real estate? Failed Treasury auctions? The dollar? Pakistan?

On October 30th I talked about the possibility of legging into an S&P 500 index strangle, starting with the sale of a November SPX 1040 put and looking to sell a November SPX 1100 call when the index rallied back over 1080.

Here we are, six trading days later, and the SPX November 1040 put, which was at about 24.00 at the time of my original post, has fallen back to just over 8.00 as I type this.

As far as I can tell, I have not yet posted about the use of Bollinger bands in conjunction with a rate of change (ROC) indicator to identify volatility breakouts.

In summarizing the action in the VIX over the course of the past two weeks, the chart below captures some of the drama in terms of 10% (solid green) and 20% (solid blue) moving average envelopes. In the 6-month time frame included in the chart, the moving average envelopes flag last week’s VIX spike as the most powerful since stocks turned up in March. The moving averages also indicate that the VIX low of 20.10 from three weeks ago is the second strongest in terms of penetration of the lower moving average envelopes.

While I have a bias in favor of using home grown charts for my chart of the week, this week one chart in particular stuck in my head, the chart below from EconomPic Data that compares recent changes in the relative level of unemployment to the overall unemployment rate.

It may take a moment for readers to get their bearings on this graph, but in essence it shows that one’s level of education has increasingly become a factor in the likelihood of being unemployed. A decade or so ago, the unemployment rate for someone with less than a high school degree (dark blue line) was about 2% higher than the average for the population, while the unemployment rate for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher was about 2% lower than the average for all workers. By 2009, the gap had tripled to the point that less than a high school degree translated into a 6% higher unemployment rate and at the same time a bachelor’s degree or higher now meant about a 6% lower unemployment rate.

Once a popular subject in this space, the VIX:VXV ratio appeared to be a casualty of the financial turmoil and record volatility spikes in October 2008, when the ratio spiked to record levels and generated a buy signal that turned out to be nothing short of a disaster.

I was not yet ready to give up on the VIX:VXV ratio, so I was pleased to see that from November to January it generated some helpful long and short signals. In a promising development, on March 2nd the ratio generated a buy signal just before the markets bottomed. When the VIX:VXV ratio urged caution in June, I had even more reason to be hopeful. Then, once again, the ratio had another big miss, issuing a sell signal in mid-July, just after the markets started rallying. To compound matters, instead of moving back toward the neutral zone (between 0.92 and 1.08), the ratio persisted with a bearish recommendation all the way to the October top.

After I dashed off The VIX Spike Conundrum Monday, it occurred to me that there might be some aspects of behavioral finance that have contributed to what is now a full year of continued overestimating of future volatility. I detailed this phenomenon in The Gap Between the VIX and Realized Volatility and it is also being reflected in a VIX:VXV ratio that has been stuck at unusually low levels from mid-July until last week.

In thinking about the various elements of behavioral finance that impair ‘rational’ decision-making and could contribute to excess implied volatility, one factor that immediately comes to mind is availability bias (nicely summarized in Wikipedia). The global financial crisis and VIX spikes into the 80s were so vivid and memorable – and so thoroughly discussed in the media – that they are all too easy to recall one year later, even though arguably most of the risks associated with a VIX of 80 have since passed.

I have been absolutely astonished by the number of comments I have seen in the past few days to the effect that right now is an excellent time to initiate new long positions on VIX options. I am still not sure what is behind most of this thinking, but it seems as if quite a few investors are excited about the VIX breakout, some have adopted a Roubiniesque pervasive pessimism and others clearly are still operating under the shadow of the 2008 volatility spikes.

For all those who think that a VIX spike of 50% is a good time to get long the VIX, my response is that your ship has already sailed.

This week’s chart of the week is a simple reminder that while many of us like to standardize on 20-, 50- and 200-day moving averages, these rarely align perfectly with historical data. In fact, it often makes sense to develop customized moving averages that circumscribe past price action in order to get a better understanding of how current forces acting on stock prices compare to past forces.

One such example is in the chart below. The ‘usual suspects’ of moving averages fail to identify support levels from the July SPX low of 869. When this happens, then a little trial and error can quickly produce exactly which moving average provided support to the underlying. In this case, an 85-day moving average did the trick. While I am not saying that an 85-day moving average is the answer to all charting problems, it is reasonable to expect that if the current market downturn penetrates the 85-day moving average, it will be a move that is comparable to or more powerful than the July pullback.

While this might not provide a great deal of comfort to longs, I have updated the VIX and More Pullback Table to reflect today’s selloff. The table shows that the peak to trough drop of 66.73 points (6.1%) in the SPX has exceeded the 2009 average of 5.8%.

As noted previously, a 5.8% pullback from the SPX 1101 established a target low of 1037. Today the SPX has been as low as 1034.63.

Since the beginning of last year, I have periodically discussed what I call “calendar reversion,” which is essentially a phenomenon caused by the fact that the VIX is priced according to the calendar, but only calculated during trading days. The long and the short of this chronological mismatch is that market makers tend to drop option prices (and implied volatility) on Fridays in anticipation of the coming weekend and raise them on Mondays.

Earlier today, Mark Sebastian of Option911 wrote the best article I have seen on this subject, How Option Time Premium Decays Over the Weekend, in which he detailed his experiences related to weekend time decay and how market makers account for this during the Friday trading day. If you want to understand options pricing dynamics and how to best synchronize a five day clock with a seven day clock, then Mark’s work is absolutely required reading.

It has been a while since I posted one of my VIX studies and, given the recent spike in the VIX, Wednesday’s action seemed like a good excuse to revisit the idea of VIX spikes as contrarian bullish mean reversion buying opportunities.

Wednesday the VIX closed at 27.91, which is up 34.9% in the four trading days since Thursday’s close of 20.69. Over the course of the 20-year history of the VIX, the volatility index has posted close-to-close four day gains of 35% on 42 occasions. If you strip out the consecutive instances of +35% days, this leaves 27 instances in which the VIX crossed above +35% in four days.

Sometimes I like to skate around some of the salient points of volatility rather than try to hit readers over the head with them. But with the VIX now 16% over its 10-day simple moving average, I hope I am not the only one going short volatility. Specifically, anyone who has been paying attention to my comments about VXX should be looking at opportunities to get short this VIX ETN.

At the moment, not only do short VXX positions have mean reversion going for them, but even with the spiking VIX the VIX futures are still in contango, meaning that they are upward sloping over time, with the second month more expensive than the front month. The chart below shows that while the difference between the second month VIX futures and the front month VIX futures has been declining, it is still substantial, which translates into a meaningful negative roll yield that continues to work in the favor of shorts.

Sunday’s Chart of the Week: Falling Transports looked at the recent weakness in the Dow Jones Transportation Average (DJTA) and included a study of the performance of the index relative to the S&P 500 index.

Today I am going to look under the hood of the DJTA and highlight four often overlooked transportation sub-sector indices:

With stocks starting to show some signs of stability, the big question on the mind of investors is how far the current pullback is likely to extend.

In order to address this question, I have updated the (surprisingly popular) table I presented at the beginning of the month in Pullbacks in the 2009 Bull Market. The revised table now shows that the pullback which ran from September 23rd to October 2nd resulted in a 5.6% decline from peak to trough, making it the third largest pullback in the S&P 500 index in percentage terms since the beginning of the March rally.

For the most part, last week saw some mild negative numbers in most of the major market indices. One particular index that is closely watched by many, however, was particularly hard hit. The Dow Jones Transportation Average ((DJTA)), an essential component of Dow Theory, fell 5.4% for the week and was particularly hard hit on Friday.

Before the market opened on Friday, two of the three railroads in the DJTA reported earnings and while the bottom line numbers were impressive, investors were spooked by substantial revenue declines. Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI) reported a quarterly revenue decline of 27% from the comparable quarter in 2008, while Union Pacific (UNP) reported a 24% drop in revenues for the same period. The weak revenue picture helped to push the DJTA to a loss of 3.5% on Friday and create what looks for now to be a provisional double top in the index in the chart of the week below.

At the beginning of the month, when I wrote about Why VXX Is Not a Good Short-Term or Long-Term Play, I figured that would likely be my last word on the subject. Well, I haven’t changed my mind, but I saw myself shaking my head more than a few times Wednesday, when the volume in VXX surged to a new record, obliterating the old record by 50%.

Perhaps this time around the new VXX longs were expecting something different, but Wednesday’s numbers just reinforce my earlier points. Sure, VXX gained 1.87% on the day, but the VIX gained 6.32%. In other words, VXX longs participated in less than 30% of the VIX spike.

I can’t quite decide whether to be delighted or puzzled that so many people seem to care that the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is approaching 20. In truth, I feel a little bit of each.

When I started this blog, I decided to devote a fair amount of attention to this unusual statistic that very few people are aware of and most have stopped paying attention to out of boredom. Of course, the VIX was at about 10 then, the markets were awash in liquidity and following a volatility index felt about as useful as trying to estimate Usain Bolt’s times with a sundial.

I was sufficiently pleased by the response to my strategy-in-a-box ETFs post that it seems appropriate to launch a follow-up post to address several questions raised or implied by readers.

The biggest issues seem to revolve around the history, performance and holdings of these ETFs. It is also important to understand the nature of the index and/or strategy that the ETF seeks to replicate, as well as the timing and methodology used to rebalance the ETFs. For each of the six aforementioned strategy-in-a-box ETFs, I have therefore also included links to a profile/summary page; the prospectus; a current list of holdings; the Morningstar performance data; and the StockCharts gallery chart:

After falling for a record-tying ten consecutive days, the VIX narrowly missed setting a new record Monday when it jumped 0.37 in the 4:00 - 4:15 p.m. ET twilight zone trading period to finish the day at 21.49, +0.06.

In the chart below, I offer some data to help put the current decline in an appropriate historical context. Prior to the streak that ended last Friday, the only other time that the VIX fell for ten consecutive days was in April to May of 2005. At that time, the bull market was just beginning to pause for a month and it was not until six months later that bulls began to reassert themselves.

With interest growing in actively managed ETFs, there is another category of ETFs (and ETNs) out there which I believe has been unfairly overlooked by most investors. I do not have a name for these ETFs, but rather than represent asset classes, sectors, geographies and other typical ETF constructs, they seek to replicate specific investment strategies. Until someone tags them with a better name, I am going to call them strategy-in-a-box ETFs.

Depending upon how you define the strategy-in-a-box concept, you can find various ETFs that may or may not conform to that definition, but six that clearly fit the profile, have attracted some investor interest and that I try to monitor are: