The velocity of money is a function of interest rates and inflation rates. As interest rates go up, the velocity of money will go up. Originally the Fed claimed they had an exit strategy to reduce the money supply and prevent inflation. However, they no longer seem to have a strategy for reducing the money supply. The money supply is still going up, not down. With an increasing velocity of money and increasing money supply, the equation of exchange predicts inflation will go up. Since inflation also increases the velocity of money, and so further pushes up inflation, the risk of "run-away-inflation" is real. Since few other people expect this, most people will be surprised. Now that interest rates have started going up, we should expect surprising inflation.
At least that is what my theory predicts. It will be interesting to watch the experiment unfold and the results come in.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
How Dynamic Hedging Will Fail
I expect dynamic hedging strategies to fail badly sometime in the next couple years.
There are companies that sell options and use dynamic hedging. This means they make frequent adjustments to their overall position so that on net it remains neutral for small movements in the market. They have to keep adjusting their position all the time in order to sort of be hedged. For example, if they sell some calls on a stock and just the right number of puts on the same stock then for small changes of the stock in either direction the gains and losses on the puts and calls can compensate each other. But after the stock moves a bit it will take a different number of puts and calls to balance each other, so they must either change the quantity of puts/calls they hold or buy/sell some of the stock so that once again they are net neutral for small changes in the stock.
It is not a true hedge though. In the event of a crash, they can not adjust their position fast enough and so they are not net neutral during the crash. In the call/put example above, the calls become nearly worthless and the puts very valuable. What they lose by being short the puts is far more than the gain being short the calls. As they try to adjust their positions, say by shorting the stock as it goes down, they will contribute to the crash. In a crash, companies using dynamic hedging could go bust.
It is kind of similar to the portfolio insurance that people were doing around the time of the 1987 crash. It all looks ok on computer simulations which assume nice continuous pricing changes and that their buying and selling does not change the price much. However, after an investment idea is popular, large numbers of people doing the same thing means things do not work like they did in the computer simulation. The people using the idea can drive the price and the price can move so fast that the idea can not be implemented as planned. So the very activity of "portfolio insurance" or "dynamic hedging" done by many people can cause a crash. When the hedging algorithm fails, companies based on it will go bust.
A company selling a put on the S&P but using dynamic hedging is like a company selling insurance against a crash while not really being in a position to pay off on the policy in the event of a crash. If too many companies selling such options go under, it could be very messy.
Murphy's Law says that anything that can fail will eventually fail. Dynamic hedging can fail.
There are companies that sell options and use dynamic hedging. This means they make frequent adjustments to their overall position so that on net it remains neutral for small movements in the market. They have to keep adjusting their position all the time in order to sort of be hedged. For example, if they sell some calls on a stock and just the right number of puts on the same stock then for small changes of the stock in either direction the gains and losses on the puts and calls can compensate each other. But after the stock moves a bit it will take a different number of puts and calls to balance each other, so they must either change the quantity of puts/calls they hold or buy/sell some of the stock so that once again they are net neutral for small changes in the stock.
It is not a true hedge though. In the event of a crash, they can not adjust their position fast enough and so they are not net neutral during the crash. In the call/put example above, the calls become nearly worthless and the puts very valuable. What they lose by being short the puts is far more than the gain being short the calls. As they try to adjust their positions, say by shorting the stock as it goes down, they will contribute to the crash. In a crash, companies using dynamic hedging could go bust.
It is kind of similar to the portfolio insurance that people were doing around the time of the 1987 crash. It all looks ok on computer simulations which assume nice continuous pricing changes and that their buying and selling does not change the price much. However, after an investment idea is popular, large numbers of people doing the same thing means things do not work like they did in the computer simulation. The people using the idea can drive the price and the price can move so fast that the idea can not be implemented as planned. So the very activity of "portfolio insurance" or "dynamic hedging" done by many people can cause a crash. When the hedging algorithm fails, companies based on it will go bust.
A company selling a put on the S&P but using dynamic hedging is like a company selling insurance against a crash while not really being in a position to pay off on the policy in the event of a crash. If too many companies selling such options go under, it could be very messy.
Murphy's Law says that anything that can fail will eventually fail. Dynamic hedging can fail.
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