In the August expiration, the amount of call open interest in VIX heavily outweighs that of puts. Put open interest, represented by the red bars in Chart 1, is decent in near-the-money or slightly-in-the-money strikes, but pale in comparison to … Continued
The following are futures positions of non-commercials as of July 19, 2016. Change is week-over-week. 10-year note: If you repeat something often enough, it becomes the truth. So the saying goes. Why bring this up? There is a sudden uptick … Continued
The last time spot VIX closed under 13 for three consecutive sessions was in early August last year. In fact, VIX back then stayed sub-13 for four straight sessions ended August 3rd, and registered three more sub-13 readings by August … Continued
From last week’s Thursday close through this Monday, the US dollar index jumped 3.4 percent. This was the sharpest two-session increase since it rallied 3.6 percent on September 29, 1992. That is how far back one has to go in … Continued
The last data point in Chart 1 is as of yesterday and uses intra-day highs rather than the close. The VIX-to-VXV ratio is calculated by using 22.89 for VIX and 23.53 for VXV. They respectively closed the session at 19.37 … Continued
U.S. equities had a powerful session on Tuesday, followed by another good session on Wednesday. Volume could have been a little better on major U.S. indices but price spoke loud and clear. The Nasdaq 100 surged 2.1 percent on Tuesday, … Continued
A week ago last Friday, U.S. stocks opened lower reacting to less-than-expected rise in April’s non-farm payroll. As the session progressed, bids showed up, as traders began to price in lesser odds of a rate hike in June. Turns out … Continued
In all five sessions last week, spot VIX got rejected at 16.50, which at the time also approximated the upper Bollinger Band. This is not any plain-vanilla resistance. It goes back two decades. More often than not, once VIX convincingly … Continued
The saga continues. VIX (13.66) continues to get sold off around 15. Since April, intra-day the so-called fear index has traded above 15 nine times, and only once has it been able to close out above (Chart 1). That was … Continued