Higher IV's in the meat complex (lean hogs, live cattle, feeder cattle, pork bellies). Long vega, non-directional play sounds about right. Hard to say what the reaction will be. People could shy away from pork which would lead to a supply glut in the pork market (bearish). On the other hand, if pork demand doesn't wane too much, but there is a campaign to dispose of infected pork inventory; there could be a supply squeeze accompanied by a rise in prices. Need to see what the geo-political reactions are going to be.
If considering equities, the small cap bios would be the place to look. These events rarely have any sinificant effect on large caps. Or IOW, there's usually more bang for the buck in a small cap reacting to some news. Circadian's suggestion was dead on. You want to monitor the news and see what reaction, if any, there is to it.
Right now the Swine flu fear index is at. Swine flu panic index uptick to 13036 confidence value 1135 (Velocity 4) one hour ago it was Panic index at 12,094 uptick. confidence value 1081 4 hours ago Swine Flu panic index now at 11291 18 hours ago Swine flu panic level now 8042 up from 5091 5091 at 10:55 AM, 25th I just started calculating confidence values a few hours ago. The SFFI (Swine Flu Fear Index) is moving pretty rapidly with good confidence.
The next things will be an Ultra Swine Flu and Ultra Short Swine Flu ETF - then the 3X Bullish Swine Flu and 3X Bearish Swine Flu ETFs will follow. LOL JJacksET4
Delta > Vega. Bellies will get brutalized tomorrow, limit down. Vol will rise, as well as skew under the market.
Swine flu fear index 98594 confidence level at 4543 (fear index close to breaking 100K) Implied volatility on this is 300% So if you were to buy calls on a swine flu fear index you with a strike of 100K for may you would be paying a pretty penny. When I started the index on the 25th was 5081 An increase of 1940% in 4 days.