Cboe Blogs

A December (&Year) To Remember "It’s (supposedly) the most wonderful time of the year With the S&P 500® up about 25% (YTD as of 12/6/2019) And Trudeau caught on hot mics It’s the most wonderful time of the year It’s the hap-happiest season of all With those holiday greetings (you're not spending 2%) and the happy (Doral>Camp David) meetings When G7/NATO "friends" may come to call It’s the hap-happiest season of all There’ll be judicial hearings for[...]

Four Centuries of Thanksgiving (And a Side of Volatility) Arguably the finest American holiday is upon us. Our Day of Thanksgiving traces its roots to the earliest Puritan settlers in the New World. The religious separatists who sailed across the Atlantic in the autumn of 1620 were greeted by an especially cruel winter during which half the colonists perished. In the Spring of 1621, Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe, is said to have taught the struggling settlers how to grow corn, catch native[...]

Carol Kennedy, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, and Arianne Criqui, Global Head of Derivatives and Global Client Services, were honored at the 5th Annual Markets Media Awards: Women in Finance for excellence in their fields. The awards recognize the most talented and accomplished women in the finance industry. Carol and Arianne were nominated because of their dedication, passion and persistence. They are extraordinary at what they do and exemplify what it means to be a leader. Learn more[...]

Volatility: It Just Is From a capital markets "meta" standpoint, volatility just is. Volatility is a nondirectional, statistical measure of the dispersion of returns for a given security or index. It’s neither good nor bad. From an interpersonal and psychological standpoint, volatility typically connotes something very different than a rote calculation. Few people wake up looking forward to "volatility" in their day-to-day lives, but uncertainty is a constant whether you invest or not. Volatility[...]

Death, Taxes and VRP? Not So Fast! Shortly after the U.S. Constitution was ratified (June 1788) and months before Benjamin Franklin passed away (April 1790), he wrote a letter saying, "Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." Others have attributed the idiom to Christopher Bullock and/or Daniel Defoe, but in this context, it’s important that none of them mentioned volatility[...]

Hello October, Our Old Friend October is upon us. For those in the northern hemisphere it means fall is in full swing complete with football, falling leaves and chilly weather. It also means that in a number of countries around the globe All Hallows’ Eve – or Halloween – arrives at the end of the month Some might say that U.S. markets began the month with a spooky move. On October 1, the first day of the fourth quarter, the S&P 500® lost 36.49 points, or 1.23% to close[...]

Our speakers and panelists at the 2019 Cboe Risk Management Conference Europe had plenty of knowledge and insights to share in Munich. Topics ranged from options-based strategies to all things volatility and risk management. Watch the videos below for insights from RMC Europe 2019.   Get the scoop on day one, day two and day three. Still eager to learn more from our RMC experts? Check out interviews from Cboe RMC U.S. Resources VIX products S&P 500 Index Options Strategy Benchmark[...]

Ed Tilly speaks at the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative 10 Year Anniversary Event. When we talk about how we define markets at Cboe, we’re not just talking about our innovative products or insightful benchmarks. We’re also talking about how we conduct ourselves and our business. How we strive to be a role model, not just in world class technology, customer service and leadership, but also in how we evolve and take thoughtful steps toward the future. As an observer of the Sustainable[...]

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is... Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1933 Inaugural Address is an unassailable masterpiece of optimism. With the unemployment rate hovering around 23.5% and GDP declining by 12.9% year over year, FDR delivered an incandescent speech that inspired hope during the worst of the Depression. By comparison, our current concerns seem downright pedestrian. At the moment, some of the things investors and traders have to fear include: Inverted Yield Curve Trade[...]

As presidential candidates prepare to take the debate stage again tonight, we’re almost certain social media will be a buzz with “hot takes,” praise, criticism and conversation.  We’ve seen how the president’s Tweets can impact our markets, but he’s not the only influential person using Twitter. Cboe realized the influence social media can have on our world and launched a social media-based strategy benchmark indexes to track it in 2016—a pivotal year[...]

The final day of Cboe RMC Europe started with a presentation from Hitendra Varsani, executive director of index research at MSCI, about the globalization of portfolio allocations. Varsani discussed the decline of size and home bias, as well as the rise of multi-currency futures to help mitigate currency risk. He also focused on the increase in trading of Cboe MSCI Emerging Markets Index options and the new emerging market and EAFE buywrite and putwrite benchmark indexes. The presentations that followed[...]

Ed Tilly, Chairman, President and CEO of Cboe Global Markets, opened day two of Cboe RMC Europe with an update on the volatility market and Cboe’s products. Tilly introduced the conference keynote speaker, who discussed Brexit and its implications. Attendees then turned their attention to a panel discussion about equity volatility trading with representatives from Societe Generale, Legal & General Investment Management, Aviva Investors and Fulcrum Asset Management. The panelists discussed[...]

RMC Europe is in full swing at the beautiful Andaz Munich hotel! Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for more updates from Munich. What’s Cboe RMC Without Some Volatility Talk? Tim Edwards, managing director of Index Strategy for S&P Dow Jones Indices, kicked off the conference with a talk about volatility benchmarks, including the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX Index) and Cboe Skew Indexes. Edwards discussed what these indexes may tell investors about market expectations for day-to-day volatility,[...]

If You Plant Ice, You’re Gonna Harvest Wind The trade war between the leaders of the two largest economies in the world continues to percolate; so too has volatility. Based on historical data, volatility as measured by intraday S&P 500 ranges tends to come in bunches. U.S. farmers, who have been the primary target for the Chinese in their efforts to counter the Trump Administration’s tariffs, have experienced volatility of their own. According to the American Farm Bureau, American[...]

We Were Certainly Uncertain Ronald Reagan used to joke that if Trivial Pursuit were designed by economists, “it would have 100 questions and 3,000 answers.” In a similar vein, acerbic investors often point out that economists have “accurately predicted all 21 of the last 4 recessions.” Well, everyone from tenured econ professors to armchair economists have been ruminating on last week’s inversion of the U.S. yield curve. On Wednesday, August 14, the yield on 2-year[...]