Word: marketeers
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...been making headlines. No, not the rock band or the cold remedy but the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index, or VIX, which has been on a wild ride over the past year. The stock market crash set this indicator of volatility soaring to above 80 - for perspective, the VIX has historically averaged around...
...right to buy or sell a stock at an agreed price, called the strike price, largely depends on the volatility of the underlying stock. If a stock is more volatile, and therefore more likely to move farther up or down, options are more valuable. For instance, as the market has fallen over the past year, investors have flooded into put options - the right to sell a stock - in order to hedge their portfolio against steep falls in the stock market. Thus, the prices of put options increased, and with them, the VIX. (Read "The Volatility Index: A Primer...
...options market is driving the price of the VIX. But there's a twist: As the stock market falls, investors tend to buy put options in order to hedge against falling prices. As the price of put options increases, the implied volatility of those options increases, and so does the VIX. However, if the S&P 500 had moved in the exact opposite direction this year, the VIX would not have been as high even though the S&P 500's actual, realized volatility would have been identical. Volatility is symmetric to market rises and falls...
...fact, the VIX does not even measure volatility. The VIX is a measure of demand for options, more than it is a measure of volatility. More accurately, it takes account of the worst-case volatility that investors writing, or selling, options are expecting. In a relatively stable market, the VIX probably does mimic realized volatility fairly accurately, but in desperate times, as investors flock into put options - and greater volatility is possible in the near future - the VIX is an inflated measure of actual volatility...
Because the VIX is supposed to predict near-term volatility, the VIX calculation only considers options expiring in the next two months. The VIX is measuring "very near-term fear." While many investors look to the VIX as an indicator of a bottom to the market, it does not possess much long-term significance...