Everyone spent today chasing the SpaceX IPO. They missed the real story.
The S&P 500 closed the week basically flat. We started near 7,380 and we are trading around 7,420. That calm is a trap.
We saw a 200-point drop. We rallied back. We dropped 200 points again. We rallied back again.
The market priced a $200 expected move this week. It delivered about 40 points of net change. That is a big, fat donut.
A week like that does not mean the storm passed. It means the volatility box cracked wide open. Once it opens, you cannot stuff it back in.
The Divergence Nobody Is Pricing
Here is what I have been hammering for three weeks. Index volatility is still very low. Equity volatility is sky high.
I am not talking about VIX. VIX leans on options 30 days out where there is barely any volume. I look at the real movement in the index and the individual names.
In this week’s video I walked through the exact readings:
The S&P 500 is priced near a 19 volatility looking six days out.
The QQQ sits around a 30 vol over that same window.
Tesla (TSLA) is pushing a 60 to 61 vol.
The index is stuck in the middle while individual stocks make violent moves. Apple got crushed near a two standard deviation drop. Broadcom (AVGO) barely budged. The correlation is a disaster.
Those two volatility worlds have to come back together. Equity volatility will not die quietly. The only way they merge is index volatility climbing higher.
That means more movement across the entire S&P 500. The quiet does not last.
Next Week Is A Minefield
The setup gets worse before it gets clearer. Next week stacks three events into a shortened schedule.
I broke down each one on the tape:
Next week is only four trading days. Markets close Friday, June 19, for the holiday.
A Fed meeting lands Wednesday. It is the first under new chair Kevin Warsh.
Triple witching hits Thursday with trillions of dollars in S&P 500 options expiring.
The market is already pricing roughly $140 of movement into those four sessions.
The inflation backdrop adds fuel. CPI ran hot at 4.2%. PPI came in hot as well.
The CME FedWatch Tool tells the story on rates. September already shows a 25% to 26% chance of a rate hike. December is projecting one outright.
Warsh is a known proponent of contracting the balance sheet. One wrong word in that press conference lights the fuse. I expect dollar strength and a hawkish tone out of this meeting.
I am not selling any index premium right now. Index volatility is too cheap against that sky-high equity volatility. If you trade next week, define your risk and use spreads.
The box is open. Get ready to rumble.
Comments
Log in or sign up to join the conversation.