Weekly Recap: 30 Things

world equity markets 2014-08-01.2014-08-08

The Nifty ended the week -0.45% (-1.59% in USD terms.)

Equities

Major
DAX(DEU) -2.18%
CAC(FRA) -1.31%
UKX(GBR) -1.67%
NKY(JPN) -4.80%
SPX(USA) +0.04%
MINTs
JCI(IDN) -0.69%
INMEX(MEX) +0.62%
NGSEINDX(NGA) +1.58%
XU030(TUR) -3.76%
BRICS
IBOV(BRA) -0.44%
SHCOMP(CHN) +0.42%
NIFTY(IND) -0.45%
INDEXCF(RUS) -1.80%
TOP40(ZAF) -0.38%

Commodities

Energy
Brent Crude Oil -0.06%
Ethanol -2.87%
Heating Oil -0.20%
Natural Gas +4.28%
RBOB Gasoline -0.14%
WTI Crude Oil -0.42%
Metals
Copper -0.93%
Gold 100oz +1.33%
Palladium -0.27%
Platinum +0.83%
Silver 5000oz -2.45%

Currencies

USDEUR:+0.13% USDJPY:-0.47%

MINTs
USDIDR(IDN) -0.20%
USDMXN(MEX) +0.43%
USDNGN(NGA) +0.74%
USDTRY(TUR) +0.64%
BRICS
USDBRL(BRA) +1.07%
USDCNY(CHN) -0.37%
USDINR(IND) -0.07%
USDRUB(RUS) +1.10%
USDZAR(ZAF) -0.02%
Agricultural
Cattle -2.98%
Cocoa +0.65%
Coffee (Arabica) -5.78%
Coffee (Robusta) -7.01%
Corn -0.21%
Cotton +2.18%
Feeder Cattle -2.25%
Lean Hogs -3.43%
Lumber +7.05%
Orange Juice +0.71%
Soybean Meal +2.34%
Soybeans +5.83%
Sugar #11 -0.92%
Wheat +0.60%
White Sugar -0.62%

Credit Indices

Index Change
Markit CDX EM -0.94%
Markit CDX NA HY -0.18%
Markit CDX NA IG +1.57%
Markit CDX NA IG HVOL +2.63%
Markit iTraxx Asia ex-Japan IG +5.84%
Markit iTraxx Australia +3.13%
Markit iTraxx Europe +2.10%
Markit iTraxx Europe Crossover +18.10%
Markit iTraxx Japan +1.89%
Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe +3.59%
Markit LCDX (Loan CDS) -0.02%
Markit MCDX (Municipal CDS) -0.21%
Credit blew out. No sector was spared with even the high quality Investment Grade (IG) index getting hit. Japanese equities down almost 5%, Asian IG spreads +5.84%. What a mess…

Nifty Heatmap

CNX NIFTY.2014-08-01.2014-08-08

Index Returns

index performance.2014-08-01.2014-08-08

Sector Performance

sector performance.2014-08-01.2014-08-08

Advance Decline

advance.decline.line2.2014-08-01.2014-08-08

Market Cap Decile Performance

Decile Mkt. Cap. Advance/Decline
1 (micro-cap) -7.55% 59/73
2 +1.64% 68/64
3 +0.28% 65/67
4 +0.26% 67/65
5 -0.83% 65/67
6 -1.03% 66/66
7 -0.28% 70/62
8 -1.34% 64/68
9 -1.13% 64/68
10 (mega-cap) -0.51% 66/66
Most of the market bled out. Large-caps continued to out-perform the rest of the market.

Top Winners and Losers

TATACHEM +4.71%
ADANIENT +8.16%
CUMMINSIND +9.13%
UPL -8.75%
PETRONET -7.88%
ZEEL -6.02%
UPL swung like a yo-yo. Up 5.65% last week, down 8.75% this week. Most analysts maintain a target of Rs. 400 (Rs. 303.50 on Friday.) What gives?

ETFs

GOLDBEES +2.68%
JUNIORBEES +1.61%
PSUBNKBEES +0.81%
NIFTYBEES -0.47%
INFRABEES -1.04%
BANKBEES -2.48%
Surprisingly, JUNIORBEES ended in the green while NIFTYBEES ended red.

Investment Theme Performance

Yield Curve

Is it officially time to panic? The yield curve inverted this week…

yieldCurve.2014-08-01.2014-08-08

Total return bond indices

Sub Index Change in YTM Total Return(%)
GSEC TB +0.01 +0.16%
GSEC SUB 1-3 +0.24 -0.23%
GSEC SUB 3-8 +0.26 -1.47%
GSEC SUB 8 +0.13 -1.43%
Yields went up across the term-structure…

August Nifty OI

nifty.puts.calls.AUG.2014-08-01.2014-08-08

August Bank Nifty OI

bank-nifty.puts.calls.AUG.2014-08-01.2014-08-08

Thought for the weekend

An introspection that is worth a read. My favorite:

Everything is mediocre. Most jobs are mediocre. Most people’s work is mediocre. Most products and experiences are mediocre. Most lives drift to mediocre. When you rise above the mediocrity, people will notice.

What is yours?

Read: Thirty Things I’ve Learned

Why Diversify?

One of the main benefits of diversification is that if you invest in a group of assets with low correlations to one another, then you are likely to get the highest return for a given level of risk. But has it really worked that way for Indian investors? Here’s what we found while we crunched some numbers using CNX 100 and GSec 8+ year total return index since 2003.

Correlation

Yes, correlations are low: 0.0624. And we have a scatter-plot to prove it:

CNX 100-GSEC_SUB_8-2003

Returns

Here’s how the yearly returns look like (%):

stocks.vs.bond.returns

An 80:20 stocks:bonds portfolio would have had an average return of 21.43% vs 25.81% of a stock-only portfolio – a give up of 4.38% in returns – with lower volatility.

The question is, is it worth the trade off if you can stomach the volatility?

Related: BOND ≠ BORING

Using SMA to Reduce Volatility of Returns

Introduction

We saw how a CNX 100 50-day tactical investment strategy boosts returns of a naive buy-and-hold strategy (here) even while considering trading costs and other friction (here.) To visualize how this works, lets have a look at the histogram of daily returns since 2010 (1150 trading days.)

Naive buy-and-hold

bh-returns-2010
Daily Returns
<= -2%
36 days
<= -1%
165 days
>= +2%
41 days
>= +1%
188 days
Average
+0.04%
Std. Dev.
1.07

200-day SMA switch

200-sma-returns-2010
Daily Returns
<= -2%
16 days
<= -2%
85 days
>= +2%
21 days
>= +1%
122 days
Average
+0.07%
Std. Dev.
0.79

100-day SMA switch

100-sma-returns-2010
Daily Returns
<= -2%
11 days
<= -2%
66 days
>= +2%
21 days
>= +1%
114 days
Average
+0.09%
Std. Dev.
0.74

50-day SMA switch

50-sma-returns-2010
Daily Returns
<= -2%
7 days
<= -2%
53 days
>= +2%
24 days
>= +1%
110 days
Average
+0.11%
Std. Dev.
0.71

Conclusion

Even after considering trading costs, impact costs and tracking error, this strategy comes out way ahead of a naive buy-and-hold strategy. Better returns than buy-and-hold with lower volatility and at a low cost!

You can follow the Theme here.

Did Popeye have it right or wrong?

I came across some interesting articles on how urban legends are born and kept alive. This is especially true of readers who skim an academic discipline, for example, by reading Malcom Gladwell, and don’t put in the effort to stay updated. And just how the secret of advertising is repetition, repetition, repetition, some “truths” stick around long after they have been debunked simply because they get repeated often enough.

The 10,000 hour rule

Made famous by Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, the 2008 book’s “10,000-hour rule” turned most “Soccer Moms” into “Tiger Moms.” However, we now know that Gladwell’s book mistook the average of 10,000 hours that experts took to master a skill with the total they required. Plenty of studies suggest that aside from practice hours, individual differences help explain success: from socioeconomics to coaching to I.Q.

However, they myth lives on as more and more people read the book and not the errata.

Source: National Geographic

Is Spinach a good source of iron?

In 1981 and again in 1995:
The myth from the 1930s that spinach is a rich source of iron was due to misleading information in the original publication: a malpositioned decimal point gave a 10-fold overestimate of iron content.

In 2011:
The story that the iron content of spinach was a myth based on a misplaced decimal point is itself a myth. Spinach has a lot of iron, just like other green vegetables, but it is unavailable for absorption.

So spinach is useless as a source of iron. But not because of a measurement error. Try to get your mom to believe it.

Source: SagePub

Here be dragons

Daniel Kahneman: “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”

People deal with statistical illiteracy by reacting with their gut. It makes us overreact to things that seem dangerous only because they’re unknown, and underreact to things that are dangerous but look benign.

But tell this to a guy who believes in technical analysis and he’ll probably kill you.

Source: Fool.com

An (Unscientific) Analysis of a Market Pundit

Today, we present a very preliminary cut of how a very popular market pundit, who is often on TV and the web, has performed.

The period we looked at was between the November of 2013 and the June of 2014. As a point of reference, during this period, investors would be up 26.14% if they had just held on to the NIFTYBEES etf.

Long Calls

On an average, his long calls gave a 10-day return of +2.30% and a 20-day return of +3.31%. Out of 761 long-calls, 302 resulted in losses and 459 in gains over a 10-day period. Not bad at all.

long calls

Short Calls

Its tough to come out with a short call when the market is moving up. On an average, his short calls gave a 10-day return of -2.75% and a 20-day return of -3.27%. Out of 206 short-calls, 124 resulted in losses and 82 in gains over a 10-day period.

short calls

You can download the spreadsheet and run your analysis here. Just let us know what you find!