Quantocracy’s Daily Wrap for 12/31/2016

A recent post on Bloomberg website entitled Rising VIX Paints Doubt on S&P 500 Rally pointed out an interesting observation: While the S&P 500 Index rose to an all-time high for a second day, the advance was accompanied by a gain in an options-derived gauge of trader stress that usually moves in the opposite direction The article refers to a well-known phenomenon that under normal market

Ive been tweeting regularly over the past few years, usually around quant finance, coding and also a bit on burgers. Last December I decided to regularly start tweeting a quant link every day, for which I used the imaginative hashtag #QuantLinkADay (yes, that hashtag took a lot of thought!), to flag interesting quant papers (generally focusing on newly published material), quant tutorials,

This is a stylized implementation of the strategy described in the research paper titled "What Does Individual Option Volatility Smirk Tell Us About Future Equity Returns?" by Yuhang Xing, Xiaoyan Zhang and Rui Zhao. The authors show that their SKEW factor predicts individual equity returns up to 6 months! ABSTRACT The shape of the volatility smirk has significant cross-sectional

As we approach the end of 2016, the Shiller CAPE 10 stands at about 28, a level rarely exceeded (with the exception of in the late-1990s technology-driven bull market). Such heights cause many investors to worry about what current valuations may mean for future expected returns. Ill try to provide some insights by reviewing the literature, which demonstrates a link between current valuations

Happy New Year, one day early. Heres wishing 2017 is successful for you in whichever way you define success. Arent calendars wonderful? A couple of days ago, up pops a reminder on my calendar to revisit a post I did a year ago. At the very beginning of 2016, I wrote a post on whether yearly performance was mean-reverting, and found some interesting things. You might want to go back and take