5 weeks ago we took a look at the rising volatility in the (US) equity markets via a time-series threshold model for the VIX. The estimate suggested we are crossing (or crossed) to the more volatile regime. Here, taking somewhat different Hidden Markov Model (HMM) approach we gather more corroboration (few online references at the bottom if you are not familiar with HMM models. The word hidden since the state is ‘invisible’).
Tag: Trading
Mom, are we bear yet?
One way to help us decide is to estimate a regime switching model for the VIX, see if the volatility crossed over to the bear regime.
Non-linear beta
If you google-finance AMZN you can see the beta is 0.93. I already wrote in the past about this illusive concept. Beta is suppose to reflect the risk of an instrument with respect for example to the market. However, you can estimate this measure in all kind of ways.
Stocks with upside potential
THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. ACTING BASED ON THIS POST MAY, AND IN ALL PROBABILITY WILL, CAUSE MONETARY LOSS.
Quantile regression is now established as an important econometric tool. Unlike mean regression (OLS), the target is not the mean given x but some quantile given x. You can use it to find stocks that present good upside potential. You may think it has to do with the beta of a stock, but the beta is OLS-related, and is symmetric. High-beta stock rewards with an upside swing if the market spikes but symmetrically, you can suffer a large draw-down when the market drops. This is not an upside potential.
Live Correlation plot, shiny improvement.
Open CPU is a great project. Few months back, I wrote a function for plotting a moving window of the market average correlation. Jeroen C.L. Ooms was nice enough to upload it to their server. Something is now changed. Quotes now return as a character class, as oppose to numeric. This messes up the function and the plot does not renders. I don’t wish to disturb Jeroen C.L. Ooms again with the correction for the code (despite his kind replies in the past). This problem creates the opportunity to look at the glistening “Shiny” package. I used it to (quickly..) build an app for the plot. You can now view a live correlation plot with the moving window of your choice. Live, as the app requests current market data. The width of the window for correlation calculation is given as an input parameter.
A shrinkage estimator for beta
In the post pairs trading issues one of the problems raised was the unstable estimates of the stock’s beta with respect to the market. Here is a suggestion for a possible solution, which is not really a solution but more stuff to do to make you feel less stupid when trading based on your fragile estimates.
Live Rolling Correlation Plot
Open source is amazing! I cannot even start to imagine the amount of work invested in R, in firefox browser (Mozilla), or Rstudio IDE, all of which are used extensively around the globe, free. Not free as in: free sample till you decide to upgrade, or: sure it’s free, just watch this one minute commercial every time you need to use it, but free, as in: we think it might make your life better, enjoy. Warms the heart, in direct opposite to the fabulous fabs out there, that instead of contributing to a better, safer society, set it back and get paid for it (see appendix). Character is also normally distributed I guess.