Is it just me or are the markets choppy as hell this month? This is the kind of trading I was bracing for over the summer. Perhaps I got spoiled by the fact that there was some direction each day in the summer. Down 200, Up 150, Down 300 ... some moves with a little conviction. Now it's a joke and the volume is lousy. Is this typical September behavior? I thought Sept was the month people come back to the markets. Maybe a lot of folks have been shaken out or are just sitting back and waiting until after we bomb Saddam.
September usually does pick up from August, but this time there is still alot of uncertainty. Terrorists, 9/11, what to do with Iraq, economy, earnings, and etc... No one is willing to committ in either direction right now. Most of the buying and selling was done in the summer. The market always shifts periods of movement just as the general public figures out when the moves are going to happen. It's like the January effect, which hasn't been working that well lately, cause alot of the anticipatory buying and selling has shifted to November and december. This could also be the beginning of a turn to the bullish side for the market. Some bear markets end with prolonged period of no volatility, just grinding out the last believer of the prior bull. Killing there hopes of any meaningful recovery in the stocks they still hold, and they just give up slowly. Compared to capitualtion, this type of ending to a bear can be painful, and nerve racking. You just have to sit through and survive.
Yeah...I think this summer we just had a couple of good months. Now, I think we're back to normal...a couple of choppy days, a good trend day, 2 or 3 more choppy days, 1 or 2 good trend days...etc.
I haven't calculated the dailyranges but they seem pretty wide to me. Also VIX is far from lows. No doubt pre-war jitters are a factor though.
Ya, I was looking at the VIX today thinking that it wasn't right. For some reason a reading above 40 seemed like chaos in the summer and the day we broke 50 I actually began getting a little nervous. Even though the VIX is over 40, I feel like I'm about to fall asleep over here. I just wanted to see if anyone else was feeling the same way, or if maybe I was just watching the wrong set of stocks as they lazily drift through the day.
We're all falling sleep. The market itself is moving, but I think just a few stocks are creating the volatility, all the rest, are like watching 4 walls of paint dry.
Personally, I feel the high VIX is more the result of seasonality than anything else...Higher implied volatilities going into rest of September and October mainly because majority of time u will see increasing volatility in those months...
I was under the impression that low 40's is about time for a normal reversal and high 40's and 50's are usually indicating the end of some pretty serious down trends. The 30's are sort of the land of paint drying. I'll grab a VIX chart and see what to expect.