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President Trump was inaugurated yesterday. Normally, the market would not be too concerned about that event, but this year was different. Trump’s strong talk about trade has the market worried about a trade war. On Friday morning, the markets traded higher until Trump’s inaugural address, then the major indices gave up most or all of their gains after Trump reiterated some of his trade rhetoric. I am presuming his comments are only a negotiating tactic. Business people always ask for the moon, but never expect to receive that extreme. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) opened Friday at $2270, and traded as high as $2277 before pulling back to close at $2271, essentially flat on the day.
SPX has been trading in this sideways channel of $2240 to $2277 since early December. The market has paused to reflect on the probabilities of the new administration’s economic proposals becoming a reality. It is hard to predict how long we may trade within this sideways channel. This market has proven very resistant to bad news, having withstood recent terrorist attacks both domestic and abroad. So I am not in the doomsday camp. This market needs some solid economic news to push it higher, e.g., passage of a tax reform bill. This sideways trading action is also reflected in SPX’s trading volume, which has been running below average all year. This underscores the “treading water” we have observed in market prices.
The S&P 500 volatility index (VIX) declined all of last week, even dipping below 11% on last Friday, 1/13. But the VIX started rising earlier this week, hitting an intraday high of 13.3% on Thursday, presumably reflecting some uncertainty leading up to the inauguration. But the VIX fell Friday, closing at 11.5%, down 1.2 points on the day.
It fascinates me to see the bipolar response of this market to a Trump presidency. On the one hand, his comments about lowering taxes and reducing bureaucratic regulations are received enthusiastically. But some of his other comments, notably about trade tariffs, make the market nervous. Layered on top of these issues may be some concern about the “establishment” politicians resisting the changes Trump has proposed and creating a legislative stalemate.
The overall market has been trading sideways since early December, but we aren’t seeing much negativity in the market’s technical indicators. The dividend yield of the Dow Jones stocks is roughly in the middle of its five-year range. The CBOE put/call ratio is a little high, but this is a contrarian indicator so a high put/call ratio is actually bullish. Consumer sentiment levels are near record highs, and the willingness of consumers to spend money is a basic requirement for a strong economy. Despite the harsh rhetoric and the anarchy in the streets, the Trump administration is creating positive expectations on the part of ordinary working people. Unless we see support levels begin to be broken, we should assume continuation of the bullish market trend.
This market remains nearly ideal for classic delta neutral options strategies, such as iron condors and calendar spreads. A diagonal bull call spread is also a good strategy for stocks with strong price patterns that may be on the verge of breaking out higher if and when this sideways market breaks, e.g., AMAT, CGNX, and BA.
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The talking heads on the financial networks have been talking about about breaking $20,000 on the Dow Jones Industrial Average for several weeks now. The Dow touched $20,000 this past Friday, but could not hold it, closing at $19,964. SPX broke out to a new all-time high on Friday, closing at $2277. But trading yesterday and today confirmed that the markets remain in the sideways trading channel in effect since early December.
The market’s meteoric rise since the election couldn’t continue, so taking a breather is to be expected. The economic proposals being promoted by the new administration are very encouraging to both small and large businesses. And this carries over to broad consumer confidence as well. All of the consumer confidence surveys are either near or above several year highs.
The S&P 500 volatility index (VIX) has been steadily declining since the first of the year, closing today at 11.5%, levels we haven’t seen since July and August. The common interpretation would be bullish, based on a consensus among large institutional traders for higher markets and minimal need for hedging their portfolios. The contrarian viewpoint would be that this is simply the calm before the storm. I am inclined to the former viewpoint.
In summary, all three market indices, SPX, RUT, and NASDAQ, have been trading sideways for some time and the possible breakouts from last Friday have now been nullified. The inauguration is still about ten days away and we are just starting to see the legislative battle lines begin to be drawn. It isn’t too surprising to see the market take a breather as this action unfolds.
Even as the overall market indices have slowed, the financial stocks remain strong. Some, like GS and MS, have flattened and are trading sideways; SCHW and others continue to climb, but at a slower rate. Buying diagonal call spreads is working well on these stocks, but be sure you know when the earnings announcements are scheduled. Carrying those positions through an announcement is risky.
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This is the time of year when we begin to see a myriad of articles about the year in perspective. Let me start the wave with some observations about the 2016 settlement prices for the Standard and Poors 500 Index, SPX. As you may know, the last time one may trade SPX options is on the Thursday of expiration week. But SPX options do not settle at the closing prices on Thursday or Friday of expiration week. A special settlement price is determined on Friday morning, based on the opening price of each of the 500 companies that make up the index. I have been keeping a spreadsheet of the settlement prices for the Russell 2000 Index and the Standard and Poors 500 Index since 2006. You may download a copy of the spreadsheet in the free downloads section of my website.
Why would I keep updating this spreadsheet every month for eleven years? I have been trading iron condor spreads on the broad market indices since 2004. One of the reoccurring questions facing me over these years has been: Is it safe to allow these options to enter expiration and expire worthless, or should I close them now? As an empirical attempt to answer this question, I started keeping this spreadsheet, comparing the closing price on Thursday of expiration week with the settlement price determined sometime on Friday (usually by noon for SPX, but a couple hours after Friday's close for Russell). A key question for index option traders on Thursday of expiration week is how far might the index move between Thursday's close and settlement on Friday? The average of the difference between Thursday's close and the settlement price is $8.09 for SPX over the eleven years of 2006 through 2016. The range of movement is from a low of $3.68 in 2013 to a high of $14.82 in 2008. The third highest average occurred this year at $10.01. So it wasn't just your imagination, it was a volatile year in the markets. Therefore, the empirical answer is pretty simple. If your short SPX option is less than ten dollars from expiring in the money on Thursday of expiration week, you would be well advised to close it while you can on Thursday. By the way, if you repeat this calculation summary with percentages to account for the growth of the indices, the highest and lowest years don't change, but 2016 is closer to the eleven year average.
Of course, that answer of ten dollars as a guideline is a very rough approximation. The most accurate method would be to compute the standard deviation of the option expiring in the money. Higher values of implied volatility lead to larger values of the standard deviation and therefore higher probabilities of the index moving far enough between Thursday's close and settlement to result in your short option being in the money. Let's look at a couple of examples from this year. The low volatility example is from December expiration. SPX closed at $2262 on Thursday, 12/15 and the volatility index (VIX) for SPX was 12.8%. The standard deviation for one day's price move may be computed as $15. The probability of having less than a two standard deviation move is about 95%. Therefore, if our option's strike price was over $30 out of the money, we had a 95% probability of the option remaining out of the money at settlement. January expiration came during the correction this year, so volatility was much higher. On the Thursday before January expiration (1/14), SPX closed at $1922 and VIX was 23.95%. This results in an one-day standard deviation of $24. In January our option's strike price would have to be at least $48 out of the money to allow it to enter expiration with a 95% probability of expiring worthless.
This illustrates why I formulated my "Two Sigma Rule" for closing index spreads in advance of expiration. On the Friday before expiration week, I calculate one standard deviation (one sigma). If the short option of either of my spreads is less than two sigma out of the money, I close the spread. Consequently, I have never been surprised by a short option expiring in the money at expiration. If you choose to carry your index option position to the Thursday of expiration week, the ten dollar guideline is a "quick and dirty" approximation, but calculating the standard deviation and using the Two Sigma Rule would be safer.
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The implied volatility of the S&P 500 index (SPX) is measured by its volatility index, VIX. Similarly, the implied volatility of the Russell 2000 index (RUT) is measured by RVX and the NASDAQ 100 (NDX) has VXN. Most commonly the volatility indices vary inversely with the values of the corresponding index, so higher levels of volatility normally accompany lower prices on the index. When one sees a divergence from this relationship, it is worth noting. Today's trading took the broad market indices higher, but their volatility indices also moved higher - a volatility divergence.
SPX closed at $2269, 0.2% higher, but the VIX closed at 12.0%, for an increase of 4.6%.
RUT closed at $1378, 0.5% higher, but the RVX closed at 17.4%, for an increase of 3.6%.
NDX closed at $4966, 0.5% higher, but the VXN closed at 14.2%, for an increase of 7.4%.
One interpretation is that the large institutional players were buying protection and driving up the option prices at the same time that the index prices were trading higher. Perhaps they are concerned about a pull back? That wouldn't be too surprising. After all, SPX is up 8% since November 7th and the small caps are up even more, with RUT up over 18%. So a bit of a breather would not be too surprising. It could be argued that this increase in volatility is simply reflecting the consensus of professional traders who are expecting a bit of a pull back after such a strong run higher.
So what is the average retail trader to do? I suggest two courses of action:
1) Look over your portfolio and identify the stocks that you think have traded much higher than you think is warranted - of course, that can be a difficult judgment. Sometimes stocks just continue higher in spite of our best judgment. Taking profits on at least a portion of those positions might be prudent.
2) Don't get too far out over your skis. This is probably a good time to wait on the market. Allow some of the Trump euphoria to dissipate.
Happy New Year!
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After posting an impressive bull run after the election, the markets pulled back this week, prompting traders to wonder whether the run was over. Some analysts are arguing that the prospects of an interest rate hike are applying the brakes to this rally. I am more inclined to think we are looking at a simple case of profit taking.
If we back up a moment and look at the overall market for 2016, this has been a tough year for traders of all stripes to make money. SPX had only gained a little over two percent when we hit that low on November 4th. That isn’t a very pretty picture to present to your institutional clients. However, when the market hit that high on November 25th, the year to date gain was suddenly a much more respectable 8.6%. Maybe it’s time to lock in some gains. The large players were predictably nervous and ready to take profits the minute any softness appeared. The trading volume in SPX supports this viewpoint. The two strongest down days this week were Wednesday and Thursday, and trading volume spiked way above average both days. Anecdotal evidence comes from individual stocks. Some of the best recent stock runs abruptly ended this week for no apparent reason, e.g., NVDA, VMW, VEEV and others. Traders were locking in profits before they got away.
The prospects of lower corporate tax rates and a more business friendly administration has fueled this recent market run higher. But now the market is taking a bit of a breather. I think this is principally profit taking, so I don’t expect prices to trend lower from here. However, that doesn’t mean we can ignore the relatively weak economic data and modest levels of corporate profitability reported most recently. By most measures, this market is at least fully priced and may be nearing an overbought stage.
But we shouldn’t forget the calendar. The so-called Santa Claus rally during the last week of the year is thought to be triggered by large funds unloading losers for tax purposes. This may lower the prices of some attractive stocks that are quickly bought up, resulting in a short-lived rally. The Stock Traders Almanac has noted the historical pattern of small cap stocks outperforming the large caps in January and terms this the “January Effect”. This effect tends to begin around mid-December and lasts well into February.
Therefore, we are entering a time of the year that tends to be bullish, whatever the explanation. I will be watching the market on Monday to see if today’s modest gains signaled the continuation of a sideways to slightly bullish market. The strong run of late November couldn’t continue to the moon, but I don’t see any evidence of the bears taking charge of this market.
