Volatility Effects

Does a low-beta strategy work for mutual funds? In his September 2012 paper entitled “Capitalizing on the Greatest Anomaly in Finance with Mutual Funds”, David Nanigian examines portfolios of funds sorted on lagged beta to determine whether mutual fund investors can capitalize on outperformance of low-beta assets. He calculates rolling betas for each mutual fund based on monthly returns over the prior 60 months (or less, as few as 24 months, when 60 months of returns are unavailable) or 12 months. He then ranks funds based on lagged betas into asset-weighted fifths each month and holds for one month, or each year and holds for one year. Using monthly net returns and total assets for a broad sample of U.S. equity open-end mutual funds, along with contemporaneous U.S. stock market returns, the risk-free rate and commonly applied risk factors, during December 1990 through April 2012, he finds that: Keep Reading

Does the S&P 500 options-implied volatility index (VIX) exhibit predictable daily, overnight and intraday tendencies? In their September 2012 paper entitled “What Makes the VIX Tick?”, Warren Bailey, Lin Zheng and Yinggang Zhou employ high-frequency data to investigate patterns in VIX behavior and measure relationships between VIX and various financial fundamentals, economic announcements and investor sentiment. Using data for VIX and other variables sampled at one-minute intervals (as appropriate) during January 2005 through June 2010, they find that: Keep Reading

The authors of the study summarized in “Exploit ETN Deviation from Indicative Value?” argue that deviations of prices for exchange-traded notes (ETN) from their indicative (immediate redemption) values may be useful as trading signals. How well does this mispricing concept work for the very liquid iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-term Futures ETN (VXX)? To check, we consider several mispricing thresholds and measure the short-term profitability of both long and short trades based on these thresholds. Using daily split-adjusted opening and closing prices and closing indicative values for VXX from inception at the end of January 2009 through mid-September 2012 (916 trading days), we find that: Keep Reading

Risk-focused asset allocation strategies derive from evidence that forecasting asset return volatility is easier than forecasting average return. Is there a best risk-focused strategy? In his September 2012 paper entitled “A Small Survey of Quantitative Models that Discard Estimation of Expected Returns for Portfolio Construction”, Stefano Colucci compares asset allocation strategies that rely on forecasted asset risk metrics but not on forecasted average returns. Specifically, he compares future gross annualized return-risk ratios, Ulcer indexes, one-month maximum drawdowns and average monthly portfolio turnovers for the following asset allocation strategies:

1. Minimum Variance (least volatile, or left-most, efficient portfolio per Modern Portfolio Theory).
2. Minimum Expected Shortfall with weightings estimated by Monte Carlo simulation.
3. Equal Risk Contribution (each asset weighted by the inverse of its forecasted maximum expected shortfall).
4. Maximum Diversification (related to expected shortfall with weightings again estimated by numerical simulation).
5. Risk Parity (each asset weighted by the inverse of its portfolio volatility contribution).
6. Equal Weighting (requiring neither average return nor volatility forecasts) as a benchmark.

He reforms portfolios every 20 trading days (approximately monthly) and estimates future risk metrics based on a rolling historical window of 500 trading days (approximately two years). Using daily returns over recent periods for stock and bond indexes and individual stocks segregated into several asset selection universes, he finds that: Keep Reading

What is the best way to bet against beta in equity markets? In their August 2012 paper entitled “Beta-Arbitrage Strategies: When Do They Work, and Why?”, Tony Berrada, Reda Jurg Messikh, Gianluca Oderda and Olivier Pictet derive and test a dynamic low-beta portfolio strategy designed to maximize excess return relative to the market portfolio. They test the strategy on a broad sample of U.S. stocks, 18 developed country stock indexes and 10 equity sector indexes by varying the emphasis on low versus high beta each month based on beta dispersion in lagged rolling 60-month intervals. Using monthly total returns for U.S. stocks during July 1925 through December 2011, for developed country stock market indexes during January 1970 through November 2010 and for sector indexes during January 1995 through November 2010, they find that: Keep Reading

How should investors view the predictability of stock market returns and volatility? In sections 5 and 6 of the July 2012 version of his draft chapter entitled “Equity Market Level”, Andrew Ang examines the predictability of the equity risk premium and equity market volatility. He also addresses the exploitability of any predictive power found. Using both theoretical arguments and empirical tests based on long-run data through December 2011, he concludes that: Keep Reading

Does demand for high-beta stocks by money managers extinguish the risk-return relationship? In his May 2012 paper entitled “Agency-Based Asset Pricing and the Beta Anomaly”, David Blitz investigates whether a volatility preference among stock portfolio managers flattens any relationship between beta and expected returns, thereby invalidating the most widely used asset pricing models. Because institutional investors typically evaluate portfolio managers versus market returns and prohibit or limit leverage, these managers have an incentive (under a belief in reward-for-risk) to focus investments in high-beta stocks with high expected returns. He calculates beta of a stock by regressing its monthly returns (in excess of the risk-free rate) against stock market excess monthly returns over the prior 60 months. Using monthly returns and characteristics for a broad sample of U.S. common stocks during July 1926 through December 2010, along with various benchmark data, he finds that: Keep Reading

Are popular exchange-traded products (ETP) such as VXX (iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures) and VXZ (iPath S&P 500 VIX Mid-Term Futures), designed to track specific S&P 500 VIX futures constant maturity index series, good hedges for stock portfolios? In their June 2012 paper entitled “Are VIX Futures ETPs Effective Hedges?”, Geng Deng, Craig McCann and Olivia Wang investigate whether these ETPs effectively hedge basic U.S. stock portfolios or exchange-traded funds (ETF) that leverage U.S. stock market indexes. Because the ETPs are only very recently available, they use the one-month (SPVXSP) and five-month (SPVXMP) S&P 500 VIX futures constant maturity indexes as proxies for them. They examine the hedging effectiveness of these indexes for five stock portfolios: 100% SPDR S&P 500 (SPY); 100% Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX); 80% VTSMX and 20% Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund (VBMFX); 60% VTSMX and 40% VBMFX; and, 40% VTSMX and 60% VBMFX. They also examine the hedging effectiveness of these indexes for three 2x-leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETF): ProShares Ultra S&P500 (SSO); ProShares Ultra QQQ (QLD); and, ProShares Ultra Dow30 (DDM). They compute optimal hedge ratios using consecutive (non-overlapping) 26-week lagged regressions of weekly total returns of each portfolio/ETF versus weekly returns of the hedging instrument. Using weekly data for all portfolio funds and VIX futures indexes since December 2005, and for leveraged ETFs since late July 2006, all through mid-April 2012, they find that: Keep Reading

Does the condition of S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) futures relative to spot VIX (contango or backwardation) predict exploitable VIX futures returns? In their June 2012 paper entitled “The VIX Futures Basis: Evidence and Trading Strategies”, David Simon and Jim Campasano investigate the predictability and exploitability of VIX futures returns based on whether VIX futures are in contango or backwardation. They focus on the two VIX futures contracts nearest to maturity, which are generally liquid with low bid-ask spreads. Their baseline trading strategy is to sell (buy) the nearest VIX futures with at least 10 trading days to maturity when in contango (backwardation) with daily roll greater than 0.10 (less than -0.10) points and hold for five trading days, hedged against changes in the level of spot VIX by (long) short positions in E-mini S&P 500 futures. Daily roll is the difference between the selected VIX futures price and spot VIX, divided by the number of trading days to maturity. Hedge ratios derive from historical regressions and are fixed for a given trade. Tests assume round-trip brokerage costs of $3 per futures contract, plus the full bid-ask spread for VIX futures and $12.50 for E-mini-S&P 500 futures (roughly $60 per complete trade). Using spot VIX levels, bid-ask data for VIX futures and prices for nearest E-mini S&P 500 futures during 2006 through 2011, they find that: Keep Reading

Are there exchange-traded notes (ETN) based on S&P 500 Index implied volatility (VIX) futures, or combinations of such ETNs, that are attractive for absolute return and diversification? In the May 2012 version of their paper entitled “Volatility Exchange-Traded Notes: Curse or Cure?”, Carol Alexander and Dimitris Korovilas examine the behaviors of simple (first generation) and enhanced (second generation) ETNs constructed from VIX futures. They focus on: (1) roll return or yield, the loss (gain) of maintaining a position in VIX futures by continually rolling from a near to a far maturity contract when in contango (backwardation); and, (2) term structure convexity of VIX futures, the generally greater magnitude of roll return when rolling between contracts near to maturity versus between contracts far from maturity. To extend the sample period, they replicate recently available ETNs back to December 2005 using S&P constant-maturity VIX futures indexes and March 2004 using daily closes of VIX futures (debting respective annual ETN fees). Using daily closes for all VIX futures contracts, 30-day (VIX) and 93-day (VXV) S&P 500 implied volatility indexes as calculated by CBOE, S&P constant-maturity VIX futures indexes, one-month (VXX) and five-month (VXZ) constant-maturity VIX futures ETNs and two recently launched second-generation VIX futures ETNs (XVIX and XVZ) as available from late March 2004 through March 2012, they find that: Keep Reading