The Stock Market Hot Potato: Volatility, the VIX, and You!

By Tony Sagami

“When did Noah build the Ark, Gladys? Before the rain, before the rain.”
Nathan Muir (Robert Redford), in Spygame

If you’ve ever walked a dog, you know about the zigzag path that dogs take down a sidewalk. After all, there are great odors to sniff on both sides of the sidewalk so your dog will veer far to the left, take a few deep sniffs before veering off to the right to see what olfactory surprises the other side holds.

About the only thing that’s certain is that once your dog reaches the far end of his leash, it will swing back to the middle of the sidewalk before taking off for another trip to the extreme ends of the leash. Human psychology, when it comes to investing, isn’t so different. Investor sentiment swings from extreme readings of euphoria and anxiety and extremes of fear and greed. Like our friendly dogs on a walk, we investors swing from the far left to the far right of the Wall Street sidewalk.

There is a way to profit from the human emotions: the VIX, or CBOE Volatility Index.

Some of you already know plenty—probably more than me—about the VIX, but for those that don’t, here is a quickie tutorial. The VIX, often referred to as the “fear index,” is calculated by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and measures market expectations of short term volatility. The VIX is derived from prices investors are paying for options on the S&P 500 Index and measures the market’s expectation for stock market volatility over the next 30 day period.

NOTE: There are three volatility indices: the VIX, which tracks the S&P 500; the VXN, which tracks the Nasdaq 100; and the VXD, which tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The VIX was created in 1993 and investors have been using it to hedge against severe market movements ever since; it’s one of the most closely watched indicators in the market.

The VIX has been very useful in helping spot major stock market turning points. As the above chart shows, the VIX has historically spiked after major investment calamities, such as the 2008 financial crisis and the dot com bubble.

Conversely, the VIX has plunged to extreme low readings (in the “teens” as measured by the VIX) at stock market tops. When the stock market is rocking and rolling, investors lose all their fear and dogpile into the stock market.

As the above chart shows, whenever the VIX falls into the teens, it’s one of the most dangerous times to be in the market and one of the most rewarding to invest in the VIX. Where is the VIX today? The VIX is well below the levels seen at the time of the 2008 crash, when the index jumped as high as 80, and is now in the 15 range. How can you invest in the VIX? There are three ways: futures, options, and specialty ETFs.

There are eight different ETFs that track the VIX, but the most liquid—and one that I use—is iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX). In fact, since starting my short-only service, Rational Bear, I have recommended VXX on five different occasions. And—knock on wood—it has been a profitable recommendation 100% of the time.

Above are the trade-by-trade results of my VXX recommendations. If you had invested $100,000 into those, all of my VXX trades, you would now be sitting on almost $135,000. Yup, a 35% gain in three months!

Of course, past results don’t guarantee future returns and more importantly, timing is everything when it comes to investing, so I suggest that you wait for my new VIX buy signal before jumping in. However, with the VIX index now in the teens, it’s in the sweet spot of producing the biggest rewards AND it’s an excellent way to protect your portfolio from the next bear market.


Tony Sagami

30 year market expert Tony Sagami leads the Yield Shark and Rational Bear advisories at Mauldin Economics. To learn more about Yield Shark and how it helps you maximize dividend income, click here.

To learn more about Rational Bear and how you can use it to benefit from falling stocks and sectors, click here.

The article Connecting the Dots: The Stock Market Hot Potato: Volatility, the VIX, and You! was originally published at mauldineconomics.com.

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Stocks Preparing for Pullback, Buy Bad News, Sell the Good

The SP500 remains in a strong uptrend, but the index has posted a sizable gains for 2013 thus far so it’s only logical that a pullback within this bull market takes place sooner than later.

With May now upon us and historically prices fall more times than not we feel a 3-4 weeks correction is on the verge of starting. This Friday we just had very strong economic numbers confirming the economy is recovering. This news has sent stocks sharply higher as shorts cover their positions and investors who are not yet long get into position to profit from higher prices. But the herd psychology and their trades are typically incorrect as they invest based on fear and greed. The old saying is buy on negative news and sell on positive news will typically get you on the correct side of the market more times than not if used with price, volume and cycles.

The Technical Traders – SP500 Index Weekly Chart

If we look at the price of the SP500 we need it to breakdown below the recent pivot low before we become bearish. Volume which is not shown on this chart is below average as price moves higher and this is a bearish sign also.

Looking at a basic cycle using the stochastics indicator we can see that the current cycle is starting to turn down. Cycles tend to lead price during an uptrend so we could still have stocks move higher for another week or so but be aware that when price starts to drop its likely a market top. But until then you must respect the uptrend. Stocks can remain overbought and toppy looking for months… so done be gambling and trying to pick a top until we see breakdown start.



SP500 Stocks Trading Above 200 Moving Average – The Technical Traders View

Stocks trading above the 200 day moving average is a great indicator for helping spot broad market underlying strength/weakness. It does lag the market but is still very powerful. The chart below shows this info and my thinking of what is likely to unfold sooner than later though price may still rise for several days yet.

We also use a similar chart for timing swing trades and market tops which are based on stocks trading above the 20 day moving average. This chart is not shown here but is now trading at a level which generally triggers selling/market top.



Stock Market and SP500 Trading and Investing Conclusion:

In short, we are still bullish on the market as we focus on trading with the trend. We do not pick market tops and we do not pick market bottoms. Knowing that stocks make their biggest moves at the end of their uptrend and at the end of a down trend it’s only common sense that risk is extremely high if you are betting against the current trend.

The best thing to do is wait for a technical breakdown and reversal which puts the odds more in your favor with much less risk and typically a clear line in the sand to exit the position if you are incorrect.

The last major stock market top which formed in September of last year had a series of strong news and strong price action persuading the herd to buy stocks. Instead it was the last impulse wave up just before a strong correction took place. That is much like what we see now with the economic news.

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Using 3X ETF $NUGT to Trade Gold and our Momentum Reversal Method

After a few years of testing with both ETF’s and then individual stocks, we rolled out our MRM (momentum reversal method) platform at my ATP subscription service in November 2011.  This is now beginning to get alot of attention in the trading community as in addition to the ATP service, I have shared some of the real time MRM type plays online with some very top notch traders.

In essence, my work revolves around crowd psychology or what I call “Crowd Behavior”.  If there is one thing in the stock markets that never changes, it’s how crowds react to news, events, and also how they over react more importantly.  My MRM system helps to define where the crowd may be over reacting on the upside and also obviously the downside of a move in a security.  Knowing roughly where that upside and downside exhaustion point may be, can obviously be a huge tool in a traders tool box.

Let’s be honest, the Holy Grail of investing and or position trading would be to buy low and sell high as often as possible with as few mistakes as possible right?  The ATP MRM crowd based timing method is what that aims to do, a lofty goal but one we feel we are achieving on a regular basis.  The major problem most investors have is selling out of a position at the extreme areas of “Pain”, where your emotions take over and you cant take the paper loss any longer and you sell.  The other issue is chasing stocks higher because the adrenaline and excitement of owning a stock that is rushing higher is too hard to pass up.

Both of those investor psychology based decisions are made in panic buy and panic sell modes.  That leads to a recipe for disaster for a trading account over time.  Instead, what we want to do is the opposite right? We want to calmly buy shares in a stock that has become oversold due to emotional responses from the crowd, and sell into a huge rally where the crowd has become overly exuberant.  What if you could do that on a regular basis all the time with cool and calm nerves of steel?

Our MRM trading system at ATP allows us as best as we can to cooly and calmly enter into oversold stocks right near the apex of the lows, and then quietly exit into the rush as the stock reverses back to the upside.

Recent examples include the ETF NUGT.  This is a 300% leveraged ETF to the Gold Stock Index.  Now we all know the Gold Stocks have been under severe pressure of late as the GDX ETF has cratered from its highs over the last many months.  My MRM system though kept us out of the gold stocks, until very recently when we saw the idea entry point for a swing.  Based on the GDX falling into the 49 and below level, my MRM targets said we were at an extreme emotional bottom using my 1 day, 3 day, and weekly crowd indicators.  We therefore entered calmly into NUGT at 15.61, and within 48 hours we saw that ETF rally to 17.81!  We sold at 16.80 and 17.10 for 1/2 and 1/2 tranches to pocket 7-10% gains inside of 2 days.   

The move from 15.61 to 17.81 was a 14% move inside of 48 hours!!  We also knew to sell into that rally because just a few short days later the NUGT had fallen all the way back to 15.30 per share.  My MRM method then said 15.31 was another entry buy, and 24 hours later NUGT was up another 7%!  So in the span of 6 trading days, MRM gave out an 8.5% blended return, and then followed it up with another 7% return.  Thats 15.5% of return with low downside risk in 6 trading days on just one ETF position!

We usually apply this type of work to MRM Positions that we actually intend to position ourselves in weeks not days.  However, if we do get extreme moves in a short period of time, we always look to trim back some of those profits in the position.  The samples above are what I call “Active Trades” at my ATP service, these are intended to days not weeks in holding period.  Keep in mind alot of our work is in an Active MRM portfolio where again, we are holding swing positions for weeks and not days, so it does not require as much daily work by our partners.

Some additional recent samples include CVV which we entered twice for profits inside of a few months.  We banked 13-16% gains on one swing, waited weeks and entered again.  The stock actually dropped below our MRM entry and we held on knowing that it was likely bottoming out amidst panic emotional selling at 10.66 per share.  A few weeks later our patience paid off as the stock rose to 13.80 per share.  Most traders would have taken the loss below $11 per share, and missed the reversal back up for 25% or more.  When you take a loss that way, you must then replace that position with another trade that gains 25% or more in this case.  MRM helps to avoid panic selling, and often to take advantage of panic drops in a stock to buy more.

Consider joining us for 90 days trial period and play along.  We provide all the alerts in real time via Email and internet posting. We provide daily updates on all positions and 24/7 Email access to me for any questions. Learn more and sign up at The Active Trading Partners.com