Tristan Yates

http://www.indexroll.com/

31 Comments

    • Investors Aren't Efficient Shoppers [view article]
      I guess the problem is we're asking millions of people to become their own portfolio managers and they have no training whatsoever. May 01 02:49 PM
    • Ultra and Inverse ETFs: The Downside of Doubling Up [view article]
      Thanks for the reference, I appreciate it. I'm working on a book on Enhanced Indexing which has some further analysis on leveraged ETFs. Feel free to contact me with questions or for additional analysis. I'll just add one thing here - check the price of SSO and the SPY in July 2006 and today and you can see that the leverage (or actually the leverage and associated reinvestment strategy) actually destroyed value rather than added it during the 21 month period, even though the S&P itself returned well above any imagined cost of capital. Apr 16 08:13 PM
    • Fed's Folly: Fooled by Flawed Futures? [view article]
      When over $1T of S&P 500 wealth is wiped out in two weeks and another $1T is on the way given the overseas losses and the futures, that's an economic reality you can't ignore. The Fed has a mandate to provide stability to the system, and the way it was going on tuesday, trading probably would have been halted multiple times that day. BB didn't know about SocGen, and regardless, I don't think a single market participant could have triggered the panic we saw. Jan 25 01:37 PM
    • If 'Real Journalism' Fails As A Business, Should Government Step In? [view article]
      The BBC is publicly funded and is one of the world's best news gathering organizations. However, it is much too soon to declare journalism dead obviously. Print perhaps, but then the model will change to television + internet + free lightweight paper, and perhaps that's more efficient. Jan 25 01:32 AM
    • Interpret a Stagnant VIX As You Will [view article]
      The VIX is a forecast of volatility, so this level means that the market believes there is a 66% chance that the price one month from now will be within 7.22% of today's price. (25/3.46=7.22). This forecast could be wrong - during the first part of 2002 implied volatility was much too low given the losses that option sellers were taking. Then it overcompensated and was too high in 2003. We have an article in Febuary's Futures & Options trader about how the best timing for covered call and similar strategies is actually a few months before the upturn because implied volatility is still high but all of the large losses have already been taken. Jan 16 04:18 PM
    • Fox Business Network Off To Weak Start [view article]
      FBN doesn't have an audience because they haven't defined one. Who is the channel for exactly? For a business channel it seems like they would have thought a little more about customers and unique selling points. Put on a show about something new and interesting like IPOs in Asia or Carlos Slim's corporate empire or different kinds of REITs and I'll watch. Jan 05 04:45 AM
    • Can the iShares Spain ETF Continue to Rise? [view article]
      Great article! I think Spain's boost is also due in part to its access to the booming Latin American market. Dec 20 06:51 AM
    • The S&P 500 SPDR ETF Approaches the $100 Billion Mark [view article]
      I thought I bought a lot of calls last week... :-) Perhaps this index's market cap is fueled by derivative purchases. Options on this index are extremely liquid. Sep 27 03:13 PM
    • Understanding Contrarianism and Bubbles [view article]
      I thought this article would be about China... The dollar can't be a bubble because it doesn't have the rapid recent appreciation and speculation that defines a bubble. The dollar might even be a value investment now, given the bearishness, who knows.

      But for the bubble deflators, keep in mind that the NASDAQ did not just "pop" one day - it went through an extremely volatile two years where both longs and shorts, and option buyers and sellers were absolutely crushed because of the complete unpredictability. In 2000 and 2001, the NASDAQ was moving 10% up or down every month on average and if you picked the wrong entry point, no matter what your direction or strategy, you were broke by next quarter.       Sep 27 02:18 PM
    • Tune Out The Hype Machine [view article]
      Is this charted or uncharted territory? That's the trillion dollar question. I started my career as a mortgage-backed security portfolio analyst in 1991 and I have to say that this looks familiar in many ways with falling prices, rising delinquencies, and bank failures due to derivatives. We watched the DQ3Ratio climb up, recommended our clients set aside a reserve, and then the ratios came back down and they didn't need it. A few banks had gone under but the losses weren't as bad as expected and the loan portfolios were in better shape too. The economy slowed, some regional economies were hit hard like Texas, but the sky didn't fall by any means. Sep 12 10:49 PM
    • A World Market Cap Approach to Allocation [view article]
      Good article. Well, the best thing about market cap as an asset allocation strategy is that it minimizes transaction costs and taxes, as it more or less rebalances itself as the asset prices change. That's pretty neat. The situations where you have a stock or sector or country that dominates the allocation, like China for example now, isn't an argument against market cap allocation but rather an argument for dollar cost averaging over long periods of time, because you could have bought China cheaply three years ago, and chances are you're buying something else cheaply today. Jun 18 06:09 PM
    • I Believe in ETFs. Do You? [view article]
      You and Will McClatchy wrote almost the same article on the same topic. I'd say his was more informative, but yours was more fun to read. :-)

      So where do you acquire your investing knowledge? I get mine from my MBA professors, published research papers, technical articles (not fluff), the Economist, some older books, and my own research. I've grown way beyond your average personal finance article in the newspaper, and any investor who wants to get serious will have to do the same, not least because explaining a difficult concept in 693 words is impossible.

      One the other hand, I'm not going to call any investor who dollar cost averages into a Vanguard Index fund for twenty years a chump either. The chumps are the people who are selling covered calls on Gold futures or something like that - i.e. trying to mess with tools and capabilities that are way beyond them and taking huge risks by doing so.       Jun 11 08:29 PM
    • Will it Take a Liquidity Crisis for Intel to Rationalize Capital Spending? [view article]
      Intel's huge profits and cash hoard is only possible because they've continued to maintain technical leadership. It's a strategic imperative for the company. There's just no scenario in which they have profits but no CapX. Jun 01 08:48 PM
    • The Impact Of Trading Volume On ETF Price [view article]
      This is a good article because it clears up a common misconception. But volume could be a factor in the bid/ask spreads, right? May 31 02:39 PM
    • The Buy/Write ETN as a Substitute for SPY -- Less Volatility, But Where's the Growth? [view article]
      Interesting article. I think buy/write is a lot more popular in the flat to down markets. I remember reading some studies about how buy/write funds were able to outperform the index in 2001 and 2002, but then lagged in 2003 and later years. A buy-write fund is actually both long and short the index simultaneously and has some weird "delta-neutral&qu... characteristics. You're never quite sure what its going to do when the index goes up or down. May 31 02:32 PM
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