Tag - market volatility

addition and subtraction card, Sheaff Brock money managers, arithmetic of loss

Stay Invested to Help Soften the Arithmetic of Loss

The stock market, it might be said, is the greatest of teachers, but attending class isn’t always fun. One of the harshest lessons the market has to impart to investors concerns the arithmetic of loss. Quite Like medical students learning about the ravages cancer can cause, investors understand the potential of portfolio losses, yet persist in hoping the lesson applies to others, never to themselves. Fact is, as the arithmetic of loss shows, a given percentage of gain is never [...]

Risk and Volatility | Lesson from Warren Buffett | Sheaff Brock

The Lesson Warren Buffett Says Hasn’t Been Taught in Business School

“Risk is not the same as volatility, but that lesson has not customarily been taught in business schools,” Warren Buffett observes. “Volatility is far from synonymous with risk.” In a 2015 letter to shareholders, the Berkshire Hathaway CEO wrote about the difference between risk and volatility. Many investors, he observes, “conflate these concepts, costing themselves money.” Yes, stock prices will always be far more volatile than cash-equivalents, Buffett concedes, but over the long term, currency-denominated instruments are far riskier than [...]

Sheaff Brock Discusses Risk and Volatility | Child on Teeter Totter

Is It Smart for Investors to Equate Risk and Volatility?

Value means different things to different people. Therefore risk (the possibility of losing something of value) can also mean different things. For decades, investors defined risk as the chance of permanent loss of capital. Wherever there was volatility in the price of an investment, that meant there was risk. But are risk and volatility really the same? As Sheaff Brock Director Jim Murphy explains, understanding the difference between market volatility and market risk is a key skill for investors to have. Volatility is how [...]

Option Overlay Strategies as Timely and Timeless | Sheaff Brock

Timely vs. Timeless—Option Overlays Strive to Be Both

With this month’s over-arching message being the power of TIME—the goal being to discuss investment tactics which are timely, yet which belong in portfolios based on timeless wisdom—the option overlay strategy becomes a particularly relevant topic. There’s nothing new about option overlays. In fact, as Institutional Investor explains, the majority of U.S. pension plans have adopted overlay techniques as part of their investment tactics. And, while in investment vocabulary, the term “overlay” can have different meanings, Sheaff Brock Managing Director Dave Gilreath [...]

Market Volatility | Heart-Shaped Roller Coaster Ride | Sheaff Brock Perspectives

What Is This Thing Called Volatility, Really?

“What is this thing called love, this funny thing called love?” is Cole Porter’s well-sung query, asking the Lord in Heaven above: “Why should it make a fool of me?” Recent market volatility has had many investors asking a similar question about the investment market. “Stock market volatility is a great way to test your nerves as an investor,” writes Leslie Albrecht in MarketWatch.com. The Volatility 101 lesson here for investors, as Albrecht correctly points out, is this: “There’s a [...]

Selling puts on the SPY to help offset market volatility | Sheaff Brock Investment Advisors

Sheaff Brock Sells Puts on the SPY

It has a long name, but the Sheaff Brock Investment Advisors Index Income Overlay portfolio strategy has one simple goal: seeking additional income that is incremental to (meaning on top of) a high-net-worth investor’s existing portfolio. For those investors comfortable with taking additional stock market risk for the opportunity to generate added (net of fees) cash flow, the Income Overlay portfolio is a long-term, bullish play on stock investing using a the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (symbol SPY). This strategy [...]

Late-Year Investing | Sheaff Brock Perspectives

Important Things to Keep in Mind for Late-Year Investing

Not for naught has September been dubbed “the banana peel month” and October the “jinx month” for investors, Sheaff Brock Managing Director Dave Gilreath observes wryly—some of the largest “slip and fall” and “crash” incidents seem to relate to late-year investing. To be sure, the worst September ever for the S&P 500 (a 30% drop) happened a long time ago. Still, with six more September investing drops since then, the month of September has the dubious distinction of having surpassed [...]

Sheaff Brock | Economic indicators looking up | thumbs up

Following the Lead—Economic Indicators Point Upwards

The economy, like the scenery on a car trip, can be viewed through the windshield, the rearview mirror, or the side window, Investopedia explains. Leading indicators are pieces of data which economists see as they look through “the windshield” at the economy, using those indicators to help predict the future direction of the markets. Examples of economic indicators include: current stock prices stock futures bond and mortgage interest rates the yield curve foreign exchange rates commodity prices (gold, grains, oil, [...]

Sheaff Brock | Market Volatility in End-of-Day Trading Volume

At the End of the Day, Market Volatility Happens at the End of the Day

Bet you didn’t know this startling statistic—26% of all stock market trades are done at the very end of the trading day! How does that relate to the market volatility fear reaction that many investors are experiencing these days? Take a closer look. In just the first quarter of 2018, there have been four times as many days with a greater than 1% price move as there were in all of 2017. When weaker job statistics, political scandals, and scuttlebutt [...]

Sheaff Brock | Market Volatility's Fear Factor with Boy Hiding in Bed

To Measure Market Volatility, You Oughta Meet VIX

Meet VIX, the ticker symbol for the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s Volatility Index. The VIX, constructed using a wide range of Standard & Poor’s 500 Index options, is a way to express the market’s expectations of volatility over the coming 30 days. What is actually measured by the VIX is the ratio of put options versus call options being bought on the S&P 500. By way of background, the CBOE Volatility Index, originally developed back in 1986, was designed to [...]