Volatility

Volatility can be a trader's best friend and an investor's worst nightmare, especially during earnings season when stocks could move higher or lower by a significant amount in one day. Among the entire universe of companies worth at least $2 billion and more than 20,000 outstanding options, there...

A trader or institution has been hoarding call options on the volatility index for quite some time and earned themselves the nickname "50 Cent" as they bought large quantities of options, regardless of the duration or strike price, worth 50 cents a piece. At one point, the total value of call...

Between a U.S. president who has a reputation for unpredictability, geopolitical uncertainty in North Korea, Russia and elsewhere and a stock market that is within a stone’s throw of all-time highs, it’s understandable for traders to be a bit leery at the moment. Headlines of political...

Robert Shiller, the famed Nobel laureate and economics professor at Yale University, has some alarming facts about the stock market that cause him to "lie awake worrying." The stock market's low volatility coupled with a questionable price to earnings ratio for stocks could result in...

U.S. stocks have been extremely calm as of late with the Volatility Index trading near multidecade lows. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 index gained or lost more than 1 percent in a single trading session just four times this year in 2017. But that doesn't mean it will stay this way forever. Stocks...

The Volatility Index and its corresponding exchange-traded note iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures TM ETN (NYSE: VXX) is sitting near a multi-decade low at a time when political tensions both domestically and internationally are at a worrisome level. How is this even possible? According to...

An increasingly popular niche within the expansive universe of smart beta exchange-traded funds is the low volatility/high dividend concept. SPHD And 2 New ETFs The PowerShares S&P 500 High Dividend Low Volatility Portfolio (PowerShares Exchange-Traded Fund Trust II (NYSE: SPHD)) pioneered the...

Earlier this year, the low volatility factor was the object of much attention and adulation, and that affection was not limited to U.S.-focused exchange-traded funds. iShares EEMV The iShares Edge MSCI Min Vol Emerging Markets ETF, iShares Inc. (NYSE: EEMV) also caught investors' attention, as...

Plenty of bloom has come off the low volatility rose. That was especially true during the third quarter when high beta offered significant out-performance over the low volatility factor, but low volatility could have its day again. Looking To China A familiar catalyst, China, could be the reason...

Timing individual investment factors, such as low volatility, is difficult. Entering 2016, who knew that exchange-traded funds such as the PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Portfolio (PowerShares Exchange-Traded Fund Trust II (NYSE: SPLV)) would outperform traditionally-weighted benchmarks...

A common knock on low volatility exchange-traded funds is that these products are often heavily allocated to the consumer staples or utilities sectors or both. A common knock on those sectors, aside from criticisms regarding frothy valuations, is that those groups are inversely correlated to rising...

Interested in participating in the market but worried about wild swings in the market? A new mutual fund has launched that utilizes a buffer strategy that may be attractive for investors who want to buy, but are worried about market volatility or the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming election...

Regarding volatility exchange-traded funds, it is those of the low volatility variety that are garnering all the attention this year. That includes the ultra-popular PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Portfolio (PowerShares Exchange-Traded Fund Trust II (NYSE: SPLV)). Amid all the fervor over...

Low volatility exchange-traded funds, for positive and negative reasons, have been the talk of the ETF universe this year, but all that attention is not exclusively reserved for large-cap funds such as the iShares Edge MSCI Min Vol USA ETF (iShares Trust (NYSE: USMV). Some low volatility ETFs...

Here is an interesting statistic courtesy of AltaVista Research: Combined assets under management for low and minimum volatility exchange-traded funds reside around $44 billion today, up from $1 billion at the end of 2011. That is good for annual growth rate of 132 percent, a statistic sure to...