If stocks rise when VIX options expire, is it good or bad?
It’s data. That, we know. If you’d never considered a relationship between stocks and options, welcome to market structure. It’s something every public company, investor, trader, should grasp. At least in big brush strokes.
So here goes.
“Market structure” is the mechanics of the stock market. The behavior of money behind price and volume, we say. You’ll hear the phrase from people like SEC chair Gary Gensler and Virtu CEO Doug Cifu. Those guys understand the stock market.
By the way, if you missed our piece on Payment for Order Flow, an arcane element of market structure that now plays a central role for prices marketwide, read it here.
So, options-expirations. Here’s the calendar. Options are expiring all the time but the juggernaut are the monthly ones. VIX options expired yesterday. That’s the so-called “Fear Gauge,” and we’ve written before about it. It’s the implied volatility of the S&P 500.
It’s a lousy risk meter. By the time it moves it’s too late. Its gyrations are consequences, not predictors. ModernIR (and sister company EDGE for trading decision-support) has much better predictive tools.
The VIX is really about volatility as an asset class (and it’s trillions of dollars now, not just VIX but volatility instruments). You can buy things that you hope rise, short things you think might fall – or trade the gaps between, which in some ways is the least risky thing because it’s always in the middle.
In any case, the assets backing volatility are the same things that rise or fall. Stocks. So a jump in demand for volatility hedges can cause stocks to rise.
Yesterday stocks rose with VIX resets.
And when it falls, it can mean the opposite. As it did August 18 when the VIX last lapsed and renewed. A big pattern of Passive buying preceded it. Then wham! Down day with the VIX reset.
Then growth stocks, momentum stocks, Big Tech, the FAANGs, etc., shot up. That’s because money reduced its exposure to volatility hedges and increased its bets on “risk,” or things that might rise.
So.
Did that just stop? No, it stopped last week. What’s more it’s apparent in the data.
Let me explain. Backing up, from Aug 6-17 – right before August expirations – there is a MASSIVE pattern of Passive money. After that pattern, the market shot up. Except for one day, Aug 18. VIX expirations.
It indicates that ETFs took in large quantities of stocks, then created ETF shares and sold them to investors, which drove the market up. And the money spent on hedges was shifted to chasing call-options in “risk-on” stocks.
And yes. We can see that in any stock, sector, industry, peer group.
Back to the present, index-rebalances are slated for this Friday, quarterlies for, among others, big S&P Dow Jones benchmarks. There are three MILLION global indexes now.
The data suggest those rebalances finished between Aug 26-Sep 10. Money didn’t wait to be front-run Friday. There’s another massive Passive pattern during that time. The image here shows both patterns, the one in August, and this September version (through Sep 14, right before VIX expirations).
We can infer, albeit not with absolute certainty, that the trade from August has reversed. ETFs are shedding stocks and removing growth-portfolio ETF shares. Hedges are going back on.
Does that mean the market is about to tip over like so many have been predicting?
Rarely does a market implode when everybody is expecting it. In fact, name a time when that was true. Sure, somebody always manages to make the right call. But it’s a tiny minority.
Whatever happens, it’s going to surprise people. Either the pullback will be much worse than expected, or all the hedges that are going on as we proceed into September expirations will blunt the downside and reverse it when new options trade next week.
By the way, market woe sometimes comes on new options. Sep 24, 2015. Feb 24, 2020. I could list a litany. Those are dates when new options traded. If nobody shows up for new options, the 18% of market cap that rests on rights but not obligations to do something in the future – derivatives – stuff can tumble.
Hedging in the SPX is about 19% of market cap right now. ETF flows are down about 5% the last week versus the week before. Our ten-point scale of Broad Sentiment has fallen from a peak Sep 7 of 6.1 to 5.1 Sep 14, still trending down. Any read over 5.0 is positive. It’s about to go negative.
Predictions? I bet we rebound next week. BUT if Monday is bad, the bottom could fall out of stocks. And you should always know what’s coming, companies, investors and traders. It’s just data.
