Monthly Archives: February 2015

US MUTUAL FUND FLOWS REPORT UPDATE 18-02-2015

Wed Feb 18 15:30:28 2015

Fund flows are important as they reflect the general investor preference for a specific asset class given current and expected economic conditions and market risk. They may also highlight non-sustainable market positioning. The ICI in the US tracks about 98% of the inflows and outflows in US mutual funds and makes its data freely available on its website. The following is a summarised report of the data it publishes every Wednesday. The first charts shows the cumulative inflows/outflows in each of the asset classes buckets since 2007

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During the month of February we have seen flows of US$ 3.51Bn in Domestic equities,US$ 2Bn in international equities, US$ 1.75Bn in Hybrid products,US$ 7.44 Bn in taxable bond funds and US$ 1.66Bn in non taxable bond funds.

plot of chunk month to date The Charts below shows the distribution in percentage terms of the US$ 63Bn that have flowed into US$ Mutual funds over the last 12-month.

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The below charts show the monthly inflows/outflows for each type of fund and plot them both within their 95% confidence intervals and also relative to their historical distribution. This provides a level of information in respect of how “out of line” or not the current month inflows/outflows may be relative to their past history. In the distribution charts The current month is highlited in blue whereas the vertical red lines represent the 95% confidence intervals.

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The chart below plot the inflows/outflows T-statistics for each of the funds cathegories considered. The Map chart provides information for period ranging from 2 years to 3 months.The greater the square the more important the inflows (green) outflows(red) over a given period.

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Oil….Have we missed the bottom… ?

Ok a lot of analysts are calling for lower oil prices, possibly to pre-2000 levels….does it mean  that we are close to the bottom …or possibly that have missed it ?

Whatever the market being traded, there always will be a a question being asked at one moment: How far can this thing go ? Clearly not an easy question to answer as this will invariably depends on factors that are partly unknown or difficult to estimate, such as fundamentals, market positioning or market risk amongst others. The first part is obviously to assess how atypical the move experienced in the given instrument is. This report aims to contribute to this. The below chart shows the Reference Price for the OPEC Crude Oil Basket over the period of January 2003 to February 2015 . at Close of business 16 February 2015 it was trading at 56.43. plot of chunk chartdata In the below I used an R script written by The Sytematic Investor to plot the previous 250 days against other similar historical periods that would have closely matched the recent history. The data has been normalised so as to be on the same scale. The chart shows the latest 250 days in black, and overlay similar historical patterns in grey. It Also shows what has been the price path for the following 250 days as well as the observed quartiles. plot of chunk pattern Finally I plot the last 250 days and a trend forecast derived from an ARIMA(1,1,0) model as well as the 95% confidence intervals. The ARIMA model is fitted to the past 750 historical values whilst ignoring the last 250 days, therefore we can look at the recent price path against the trend forecast and its confidence intervals to gauge how (a)typical the recent move has been. plot of chunk arimaplot

G10 FX Position Report 16-02-2015

G10 FX POSITIONING REPORT

Mon Feb 16 10:58:42 2015

The following report aims to provide a gauge to the current market positioning in G10 FX. It focuses on US$ crosses and uses a standardised statistical measures of price deviation as well as a regression methodology to produce an estimate of how stretched currency exchange rates are and also to evaluate how currency managers are likely to be positioned and leveraged in G10 Currency. I use the BTOPFX in the report but can do the computations for any other peer group benchmark.

G10 FX STRETCH MAP

The stretch indicator looks at how much exchange rates are extended by calculating the T-stat of the mean price deviation over a rolling period of 61 days. The charts below shows the results for each currency pairs over the last 500 days. The spot prices are expressed as 1 unit of foreign currency versus the USD. The purple line represent the median value since 2005 and the red lines represent the 95% confidence intervals. Therefore if the value is above or below those the deviation of the given exchange rate would be deemed as atypical relative to what would be expected under a normal distribution and therefore overbought/oversold.

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The below shows the above calculated T-stats but this time relative to their historical distributions. Once again the red lines delimit the 95% confidence intervals and the purple line the median value. The blue line indicates the most current value of the T-stat.

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The following Map chart shows how strethed G10 FX exchange rates are over time horizons ranging from 1-month to 6-month. The bigger the square the most significant the upside (green) or downside (red) of the exchange rate over the given period. All the exchange rates are quoted on CCY-US$ basis so red indicate a depreciation of a given CCY against US$ and green an appreciation versus the US$.

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Estimated Currency Managers Postioning in G10 FX

To determine the sensitivity of currency managers to exchange rates and therefore their current positioning we regress the daily returns of the BTOPFX index against the daily logarithmic returns of G10 FX rates. We then calculate the T-stat for each of the regression’s slope coefficients. The higher the T-stat the higher the sensitivity to a given currency and therefore likely positioning. Using the regression weights as well as the variance of the independent and explanatory variables as input we can then easily deduce an estimation of the current risk utilisation of the typical currency manager as inferred by the values of the BTOPFX.

The below shows the T-stat of the regression’s slope coefficients over the last 500 days. The purple line represents the median value since 2005 and the red lines represent the 95% confidence intervals. Therefore if the value is above or below the red lines the positioning in a currency would be deemed as extreme and therefore the risk of unwinding would be greater since the market inventory would likely be close to its highest. Probably highlighting a good environment to enter a contrarian trade.

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The sensitivity of currency managers returns to changes in G10 FX rates relative to their historical distribution is shown below. Once again the red lines are the 95% confidence intervals and the purple line the median value. The blue line indicates the most current value of the T-stat. If this one is either side of the intervals of confidence it indicates a potentially overextended market positioning in the given currency.

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The exposition to the US$ is derived from the combined sensitivities to the other currencies and is shown in the same fashion than for the other currencies. Namely against an axis of time and relative to its historical distribution.

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The below Map chart shows the currency managers sensitivity to G10 FX exchange rates over time horizons ranging from 1-month to 6-month. The bigger the square the most significant the sensitivity to a currency the exchange rate over the given period. Long positioning is shown in green and short in red.

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Estimated Leverage

As explained previously the level of risk utilisation of currency managers and therefore their gearing can easily be derived by using the regression coefficients and the variances of both the independent and explanatory variables. The chart below shows the rolling estimation of risk utilisation as well putting it in respect of its historical distribution. Average Risk utilisation over the last 61 days is estimated at 25.36 % of maximum.

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