Shock, shock. Opposite to traditional knowledge, the bond market could also be taking its threat cues from equities. No less than, that seems to be the case when fluctuations within the two main volatility indices are in contrast.
Fairness buyers typically look to the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) as a gauge of worry or future uncertainty within the inventory market. In the meantime, fixed-income buyers depend on the Merrill Lynch Possibility Volatility Estimate (MOVE Index) to trace expectations of future volatility within the bond market. However which market units the tone for the opposite? Does one in all these volatility measures lead the opposite, or are they merely reacting to distinct sources of threat inside their very own domains?
Difficult Assumptions: Proof That Equities Lead Bond
To reply that query, we examined how the VIX and MOVE indices have interacted over time, utilizing each day information going again to 2003.
Our evaluation revealed a stunning outcome: whereas fluctuations within the MOVE index don’t predict actions within the VIX, adjustments within the VIX do assist forecast future strikes within the MOVE index.
This flips standard knowledge. Buyers typically assume that the bond market, with its sensitivity to rate of interest expectations and macroeconomic indicators, units the tone for equities. However a minimum of on the subject of market-implied future uncertainty, the connection seems reversed: the bond market is taking its cues from shares.
To discover this, we checked out how the 2 indices behave collectively. Over the past 20 years, they’ve typically moved in tandem, notably in periods of macroeconomic stress, with a 30-day rolling correlation that averaged round 0.59. However correlation isn’t causation. To check for a predictive relationship, we used Granger causality evaluation, which helps decide whether or not one time sequence improves forecasts of one other. In our case, the reply was clear: the VIX leads.
Market Stress and Momentary Bond Management
Apparently, the sample shifts in periods of elevated stress. When each the VIX and MOVE indices spike above their seventy fifth percentile ranges, indicating a high-volatility interval, we observe a reversal: the MOVE index exhibits some predictive energy over the VIX. In these moments, equities seem to take cues from bonds. Whereas uncommon, this exception means that in instances of acute uncertainty, the same old stream of knowledge between markets can briefly reverse.
One approach to interpret these outcomes is that as a result of the MOVE index appears to take the lead in periods of utmost uncertainty, bond managers are extra attune to very large macro shifts within the economic system and seize large sentiment shifts higher than fairness managers (i.e., once we go from optimistic to destructive momentum).
Implications for Multi-Asset and Hedging Methods
These findings might have probably the most influence not for buyers that make investments solely in a single asset, however extra so for buyers which are unfold throughout varied asset courses. The outcomes spotlight that for multi-asset managers, on the subject of assessing worry available in the market, it could be finest to concentrate to the bond market when large strikes in worry or uncertainty turn out to be obvious. However when coping with small actions within the notion of future uncertainty, the inventory market might surprisingly be the higher measure of threat to trace.
These outcomes even have sturdy implications for buyers who usually are not within the fairness market or the debt market, but use them to hedge threat. If a commodities dealer is in search of early indicators of massive strikes within the fairness market or bond market to get out of commodities, they might wish to shift their consideration between the VIX and the MOVE indices as regimes transfer.
These findings problem a long-standing assumption: that the bond market all the time leads. No less than on the subject of measuring future uncertainty, equities appear to set the tone, besides, notably, in probably the most risky moments, when bonds regain their affect. It seems that, on the whole, the bond market is wanting extra to the fairness marketplace for future assessments of threat slightly than the opposite means round. These outcomes benefit additional examine, not simply into which market is main the opposite, however how this spillover of uncertainty travels between them.