There’s been a lot of focus on short vol strategies this week and many questions about how long it can continue. For those that are curious, below is a brief explainer on how short vol has contributed to the selloff.

In short, this episode is a textbook example of forced selling. It can be tough for investors to see markets and prices move so quickly and irrationally, but it also creates opportunity as forced selling means that price action disconnects from fundamentals.

1. In this case, it was short vol positions that were crushed. Short positions started losing money because the VIX was ticking up. To limit losses, the shorts needed to go cover their short positions by buying VIX futures, which pushed those contracts and the underlying index even higher. This is called a short covering rally or a short squeeze. It is essentially buying that begets buying. Interestingly, in this case, the squeeze was in the VIX which moves inversely to the equity markets; thus, a rising VIX put downward pressure on the equity markets.
2. A major method of shorting volatility was to short futures linked to a volatility index. Futures have embedded leverage because investors only need to post a fraction of the notional value as collateral. When the position starts losing money, brokers will make margin calls demanding more collateral. If the investor cannot post more collateral, they’ll have to close out their position or liquidate other portfolio assets. Thus, they either had to buy and push the VIX higher or sell other risk assets which pushed their prices lower. Either way, equity markets moved down.
3. Once the troubled assets and players are identified, investors will begin pulling allocations. Exchanged-traded products, mutual funds, hedge funds, and so on will receive redemption requests. They will be forced to close out their short positions or liquidate other assets to meet redemptions. Again, this will further reinforce the price action.

Short covering, margin calls, and redemptions have exacerbated the recent market declines and they could continue. It is unclear how much exposure still needs to be unwound or what the leverage ratios are. Friday’s bounce may have been the bottom or there could be more pain to come this week. Investors should have a gameplan in place to take advantage of either scenario.

I inadvertently deleted my last post on 10 lessons we can learn from this latest round of exploding vol and the implosion of short vol strategies and products. With everything going on in markets right now, I have to focus on other things and let that post go. I still have the images, so I can give a brief recap of those at least!

1. AVOID shorting volatile assets and NEVER EVER short something that can spike up exponentially. It doesn’t matter how smart you are because you don’t know the future. History is littered with smart people that blew themselves up by shorting imprudently.
2. Looking at the below chart, it’s difficult for me to understand how anyone could short the VIX in January. You’re getting a low price on your short sale and it frequently explodes higher. 
3. Unfortunately there’s a lot of perverse incentives and other bullshit in financial services. Sponsors and managers are incented to create products to generate management fees, brokers and custodians encourage trading to generate transaction fees, and it nobody cares if the products are beneficial or not. Some of them are dangerous. Below is the VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX Short Term ETN (symbol: XIV). Went down 90+% overnight. Investors lost money, while the product sponsor, manager, and brokerages all made money and didn’t lose it when the thing crashed.
4. It’s not just retail investors that make mistakes though. Recently, a bunch of Wells Fargo advisors were fined for not understanding the above types of funds and making misguided  recommendations to clients. Another team that manages a hedge fund and a public mutual fund (symbol LJMIX) made some serious errors causing their mutual fund investors to lose 80+%. This is a publicly-registered mutual fund with the word preservation in it’s name. Buyer beware indeed! Knowing what you own is much more important than knowing it’s history. The magnitude of adversity often trumps the probability of adversity.

This is not an “I told you so” post. The lesson is that investing is tough, so implement some risk management as guardrails and be discerning and skeptical. Retail and professional investors alike are susceptible to greed and complacency.

Have a great weekend and back up your blogs!

The great team at GapMinder has created Dollar Street, which is a very cool way of looking at the mundane all around the world. The photos are organized and standardized, so you can see what various aspects of life look like at similar income levels around the world. Check it out:

https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street

Also, an entertaining TED Talk about the site: