VolDex® Implied Volatility Indexes

  

See: Implied Volatility.

Implied volatility measures the likelihood that a particular price will make a big move in the near future. It's like a consensus opinion about how far a price is likely to move in a given time frame.

The measure is helpful in making investment decisions. Times with high volatility mean big swings...high risk, potentially high reward. Low volatility is like sailing with no wind: calm waters, but it's hard to get anywhere.

There are a few indexes that measure implied volatility. The most famous is the VIX. The VolDex index (official name: the Nations Large Cap VolDex Implied Volatility Index) is another alternative. The VolDex index uses a different formula for determining implied volatility than the VIX. It focuses on at-the-money options for the SPY (the S&P 500 index), while the VIX uses all options. Despite the different underlying basis, the VIX and the VolDex move in almost lock-step with each other, making either a worthwhile way to track implied volatility.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: How does duration affect bonds ...2 Views

00:00

And finance Allah Shmoop How does duration affect bonds Okay

00:09

people It's a tale of two bond babies They're both

00:12

incubating in this well giant bond Womb Meet Harry Harry

00:16

the homunculus He's a bond He's almost ready to come

00:20

out and say hey to the world He'll turn right

00:22

into cash when he you know exits He carries in

00:25

his heart a short term bond with life We know

00:29

a ton about him We could see his excellent facial

00:31

features here in his strong arms here and his you

00:35

know excellent job They're incubating Harry Well Harry is a

00:38

short term bond We have only a very short period

00:41

of time until he matures and then is on his

00:44

own at least not directly You know swimming in our

00:46

bond Cool little ambiguity with tons of doctors looking in

00:50

on him Little risk that his AIPO are rather retirement

00:53

from incubating doesn't go well Short term bond Short duration

00:58

until maturity Not very volatile because well we can see

01:01

so much already and have clarity that he's healthy Like

01:04

the payments supporting him are right there We can identify

01:07

him No risk no worries Bond pays off And everyone

01:11

moves on Now Meet Justin fertilized a tiny dot ages

01:15

until he's born or matures We have no idea what

01:18

he'll look like how he'll perform in the incubation process

01:21

whether the womb will continue to be a healthy pool

01:24

to swim in or well frankly whether or not he'll

01:26

even make it Justin is a long term bond or

01:30

a bond with long duration like when a given company

01:34

sells one hundred million dollars worth of their bonds promising

01:36

to pay five percent a year in interest and then

01:38

pay back the principal in thirty years That's a long

01:41

bond Thirty years from now is eternity For a lot

01:44

of companies we'll think about what the world looked like

01:46

thirty years ago Yahoo was just coming into prominence Is

01:49

one of the largest companies in the world Well guess

01:52

what it died Nokia not Apple was the largest market

01:56

cap company in the world or most highly valued company

01:59

in the world It died Facebook and Google really weren't

02:03

even formed so long Duration bonds have extreme sensitivity to

02:07

very small inputs Early in there Jess Station Disney has

02:11

a hundred year bond Siri's that are about two decades

02:15

into their maturity Is there no risk that Disney will

02:18

be gone in eighty years Like Well could ABC Television

02:22

no longer exist because producers just stream their own TV

02:25

shows on the Web and they don't need a network

02:27

Is it possible ESPN is gone Because the NFL and

02:30

others just want to go direct to customers They don't

02:33

need ESPN anymore Could roaming gangs have taken over Disneyland

02:37

and Disney World and the other Disney thing He's making

02:39

it you know not the happiest place on Earth You

02:42

know like the Pirates of the Caribbean weren't menacing enough

02:45

So it's not like one in a million shot that

02:47

Disney joins Yahoo in Nokia in the next eighty years

02:51

When bonds have long durations tons of exogenous risk I

02:54

risk you can't imagine fathom believe or accept comes into

02:58

play And one other big element hits long duration bonds

03:01

Very hard That is prevailing interest rates like let's imagine

03:05

that when Justin was you know planted the world's economies

03:08

were fragile needing a boost from low interest rates Teo

03:12

Turbo charge things and help get the world's economies going

03:15

again So at that time for say a rated you

03:18

know best quality bond paper Well rates were four percent

03:22

But then a dozen years later inflation in a globally

03:26

heated mesh of economies started to be a real thing

03:29

and central banks around the world began raising rates So

03:32

twelve years later that prevailing rate was seven percent instead

03:36

of four And Justin was yielding just four Like his

03:39

yield doesn't change year after year or rather his coupon

03:43

or that four percent he's paying doesn't change Year after

03:46

year the price of the bond might go down and

03:48

it does so now for eighteen freaking more years until

03:52

that thirty year maturity bond of just and matures and

03:54

then pays cash well Justin will be paying three percent

03:57

per year less than his brethren who are being seven

04:01

percent essentially costing his parental investors in him One point

04:05

Oh three to the eighteenth power there That's how we

04:08

do the bond math on how much that cost them

04:10

Or set another way Investors in a seven percent yield

04:14

ER versus the four percent or in Justin would get

04:16

almost seventy percent more money by the time Justin pops

04:20

out of the oven then sticking with Justin So think

04:23

about this in extreme short case situations like let's say

04:26

you have Harry and Justin both yielding four percent Harry

04:29

is doing a year Justin is due in thirty years

04:32

If tomorrow rates suddenly jumped to seven percent overnight well

04:35

then Harry loses one year's worth of opportunity Cost meaning

04:39

Harry only yields four percent instead of the prevailing seven

04:42

percent right Yeah he could have been a seven percent

04:45

or he could have been somebody instead of a bum

04:48

So Harry loses three percent for one year Not great

04:51

but not a disaster either So if that rate hike

04:54

suddenly happened well what would Harry likely trade at one

04:58

year before his cash conversion in principle payoff Well if

05:01

Harry was a thousand dollar bond and he'd pay forty

05:04

bucks over that year the four percent there But the

05:07

new rates were paying seventy bucks over that year Wealth

05:10

Then you'd ask How does Harry's forty dollars in interest

05:12

payments and just so that they now pay seventy dollars

05:16

or set another way and ignoring some time value of

05:18

money things here for simplicity If Harry dropped in price

05:21

to nine hundred seventy dollars well then in the course

05:24

of a year He'd appreciate thirty bucks for the principal

05:27

while still paying the forty and interest And he deliver

05:30

seventy bucks in total return like thirty and appreciation in

05:34

forty and interest to his parental investors and match the

05:38

seven percent prevailing rates Okay so that's Harry in one

05:41

year What happens to just think about it He's got

05:44

only four percent a year yield That's got to adjust

05:46

to the new world reality of seven percent a year

05:49

RO rates that kind of class of a bond Well

05:51

his thousand dollars par value That market price drops a

05:55

lot In fact it dropped by one point Oh three

05:59

to the eighteenth power Or rather that becomes the denominator

06:03

in the new calculation So the thousand dollar bond value

06:06

drops to a thousand invited by one point seven ish

06:09

or about five hundred eighty five dollars and then slowly

06:13

slowly slowly over eighteen years It then crawls back tto

06:17

par assuming the parent company that issued Justin Will survives

06:21

the entire time And then finally mercifully eighteen years later

06:26

the emerges at par as a Philadelphia On paying off

06:29

in cash he goes out into the rial adult bond

06:32

world and it does you no adult bond things But

06:35

hopefully he makes good decisions and doesn't get too heavily 00:06:37.933 --> [endTime] into you know bondage Oh my

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