IVOL News and Press, Quadratic Interest Rate Volatility and Inflation Hedge From 10/05/20

U.S. election is just one of the three forces driving financial markets. Debunking the notion that a GOP administration is better for financial markets than a Democratic government. What a Trump or Biden win could mean for equities, fixed income and real assets. For further ...

As news hit that President Trump and the First Lady contracted COVID-19, so did the market at the open with Dow down roughly 450 points. With the election already a concern, no fiscal stimulus on the way, and rising weakness in the economic data, we added a short-market hedge to portf...

President Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis has raised worldwide concern. While everyone shares concern about his personal health (and that of the First Lady), it is natural (and reasonable) to consider one's own investments. This analysis requires conclusions about the effect on the ele...

The first stage of the US economic recovery proved as strong as we expected, and even following the second wave of contagion in July, the recovery showed an encouraging degree of resilience. We expect third-quarter US gross domestic product to show a strong quarter-on-quarter rebound,...

The dramatic move in commodities could be due to portfolio rebalancing at the end of the month, or it could be signaling that the recovery is running out of steam. Countries are doing QE to manipulate their currencies and get inflation, but their attempts to reflate their economies ar...

The reality that most small businesses close in failure underlines the risk involved in loaning money to such concerns. Still, it is difficult to deny the importance of small business in the overall economy. The Fed has played a major role in pushing inequality higher. Federal Reserve...

From time to time, Austrian economists, gold bugs, and other economists on the saner end of the spectrum warn of the inflationary dangers of modern central bank policies. In order to understand the problem, it is necessary to get clear on the basics of the discussion. During norma...

With central banks anchoring official rates at historic lows, investors are understandably concerned that government bonds won't act as an offset to equity risk the way they have in the past. But recent history suggests that low - and even negative - yields don't eliminate the buffer ...

The second quarter of 2020 saw the worst quarterly decline in economic terms since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The third quarter of 2020 is the first recovery quarter, and that recovery is extremely sharp because it is coming from such a depressed bottom. Many economists ar...

The global market is in the early recovery phase of the business cycle following the COVID-19 recession. This implies an extended period of low-inflation, low-interest-rate growth - an environment that usually favors equities over bonds. But after such a rapid rebound, an equity market pu...