Latest news with #MarketVolatility
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Low IV Alert: Stocks that Could be Ready to Pop
Market volatility has dropped since the April correction, but with plenty of items on the news front, we could see a volatility spike at any point. That could mean it's a good time to look for stock with a low implied volatility percentile. More News from Barchart NVDA Broken Wing Butterfly Trade Targets A Profit Zone Between 150 and 160 Tariff Deals Spark Unusual Options Trading in Carrier Global Corp Stock Stop Missing Market Moves: Get the FREE Barchart Brief – your midday dose of stock movers, trending sectors, and actionable trade ideas, delivered right to your inbox. Sign Up Now! A lot of stock are showing a low implied volatility rank. Charles Schwab (SCHW) for example, is showing implied volatility of 19.87% compared to a twelve-month low of 19.87% and a twelve-month high of 59.00%. Implied volatility rank is one of the most common metrics used when trading options. IV Rank is a measure of implied volatility where current implied volatility is compared to the range of implied volatilities in this past. This comparison is made on the same stock. For example, SCHW's IV rank takes the current implied volatility and compares it to the past implied volatilities SCHW has had. This is then made into a percentage ranging from 0-100%. A percentage of zero would depict a stock is currently at the lowest level of implied volatility it has been during the lookback period. In contrast, an IV percentile of 100% illustrates that the stock is trading at its highest level of implied volatility. To get a true picture of stocks with a low implied volatility percentile, we can use the Stock Screener. Using the Stock Screener to Find Low Volatility Stocks Using the Stock Screener, we can set the following filters to find stocks with low implied volatility percentile. Total Options Volume greater than 2,000 Market Cap greater than 40 billion IV Rank less than 15% This screener gives us the following stocks ranked from lowest IV Percentile to highest: Charles Schwab (SCHW) Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) ASML Holdings (ASML) Circle Internet Group (CRCL) Broadcom (AVGO) Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) Nvidia (NVDA) PNC Bank (PNC) Capital One Financial (COF) U.S. Bancorp (USB) Here is the full list: How To Use IV Rank As a general rule, when implied volatility rank is low, it's better to focus on long volatility trades such as debit spreads, long straddles and long strangles. It also makes sense to compare a stock's current IV Rank to the market in general. If all stocks are showing low IV Rank, then there might not be much of an edge in buying volatility on a specific stock. But, if general market implied volatility is high, that could be a good time to buy cheap volatility in some of the names above. It's also a good idea to keep an eye on the upcoming earnings dates as stocks can make big moves following earnings announcements. Please remember that options are risky, and investors can lose 100% of their investment. This article is for education purposes only and not a trade recommendation. Remember to always do your own due diligence and consult your financial advisor before making any investment decisions. On the date of publication, Gavin McMaster did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Embrace the chaos: A Morgan Stanley derivatives exec on life at the desk
Sales and trading desks have thrived amid market volatility this year, boosting bank revenues. To decode what industry upstarts need to succeed, BI spoke to a top exec at Morgan Stanley. Iliana Bouzali, a global derivatives head, shared her advice and experience on the trading floor. When you think about Wall Street, you usually think about M&A — but with dealmaking in the slumps, big banks' sales and trading desks have become the stars of the show. In the first half of the year, several major banks reported record-breaking revenues from helping institutional clients, such as hedge funds and pension funds, trade stocks, bonds, and derivatives. A volatile 2025 market has brought more price swings, more trading opportunities, and more client activity than ever before. With all eyes on this booming business, Business Insider set out to shine a spotlight on Wall Street's sales and trading business. What's life like at the desk? What does it take to thrive in this fast-paced job? And what should young people aspiring to work in sell-side sales and trading know? For answers, we turned to Iliana Bouzali, global head of derivatives distribution and structuring for Morgan Stanley. She started her career as an intern at Morgan Stanley in 2003. She was pursuing an economics degree at Yale when she fell in love with the trading floor and never looked back. "The energy of a trading floor is like nothing else. It's not for everyone, but if you like it, you love it," she told Business Insider. "It's a very flat architecture, there's no hierarchy. If you have something useful to say, you say it. If there's a problem to solve, it doesn't matter what your title is, you solve the problem. And it can be very infectious, so I was hooked." Whether you're pitching clients on the products they need to grow and protect their portfolios (sales) or executing on those orders (trading), Wall Street trading floors are known as fast-paced, high-intensity environments where people thrive on the adrenaline and competition of following the market. To succeed, she said, you must embrace the chaos. "Life, markets, clients — can be complicated. It will be chaotic at times," she said, adding, "The best young hires don't panic, they adjust under pressure." Here is Bouzali's advice for interns and industry upstarts after 21 years rising in the ranks on the trading floor of one of Wall Street's most competitive banks. Embrace insecurity rather than avoid it Bouzali said she often tells young hires to use their inevitable feelings of fear and insecurity as motivation to work hard instead of faking confidence or know-how. "I always like telling our incoming interns: You will be insecure, it's a fact of life," she said. "Embrace it and let those insecurities, your fears, become a driving force. Use them instead of pretending that they're not there." Bouzali, for example, admitted to feeling both excited and terrified during her first summer on the trading floor, and was worried she didn't know enough about finance. "It's important to not compare yourself to peers and start competing against a more honest metric — the version of yourself that plays it safe." Learn to deal with "opacity" One of Bouzali's earliest lessons was learning not to expect the structure and direction she was used to at university, where the path to success is clearly laid out in syllabi and measured via homework and tests. "A trading floor is particularly opaque, and that ambiguity is a feature, it's not a bug," she said. If that's confusing, it's meant to be, Bouzali said. "It's something that I try to convey to our interns early on," she said, adding, "You will not always be handed tasks or told exactly what to do and how to do it." Opacity is not a signal to wait, but to move, she explained. "You have to throw yourself into problems. You have to sniff out what matters and what doesn't matter. You have to pin point what people's bottlenecks and pain points are and just start being useful," she said. Make decisions with less information than you think you need Bouzali referenced what Jeff Bezos once coined as his "70% rule." It argues that you should make decisions with 70% of the information, and Bouzali says it's something she tries to live by. "In certain domains, if you wait for 80% or 90% of the information, the opportunity will be gone," she said. It's a mantra she thinks more industry upstarts should adopt. "I sense that young people — and generally all people — overthink, overplan, and wait too long to curate the perfect path forward," she said. "Many decisions can be reversed, few decisions are irreversible." Chase impact rather than promotions No one — not even the best investors in the world — can predict the future. Bouzali knows this and suggests young people learn to focus on what's in front of them. "Don't obsess over the next 10 years," she said. "Just focus on winning the next 6 to 12 months." Getting things done versus chasing titles will naturally lead you to the next big thing. "Promotions don't follow ambition. They follow impact," Bouzali said. "A better question than 'How do I get ahead?' is 'What are the hard things that need to get done that I could do?'" Learn to slow down Bouzali's job demands she stay up to speed on the news and market at all times, so she uses reading as a way to diversify her perspectives outside the here and now. From obscure medieval history to art criticism and strange fiction, she prefers to read things "off the beaten path." "I try to avoid the super contemporary and super trendy because I really want to develop completely different mental threads," said Bouzali of her book choices. "It's been very good for me to just step completely outside of what is trendy here and now and find older, slower modes of thought." Read the original article on Business Insider
The National
18-07-2025
- Business
- The National
Oil prices jump after Iraq drone attacks and fresh EU sanctions on Russia
Oil prices jumped on Friday and were heading for a third consecutive weekly gain as drone attacks on key Opec member Iraq raised supply concerns and the EU approved a raft of new sanctions on Russia. Brent, the benchmark for two thirds of the world's oil, was 1.06 per cent higher at $70.26 a barrel at 4.07pm UAE time. West Texas Intermediate, the gauge that tracks US crude, added 1.27 per cent to $68.40 a barrel. Intraday gains peaked at about 1.5 per cent. Oil prices have trended upwards since May, peaking on June 19 after Israel attacked Iran, but they have since pared gains. Year-to-date, Brent is down more than 6 per cent, while WTI has shed 7.8 per cent. Conflicts in the Middle East have been among the main drivers of global oi market volatility in recent months, and the drone attacks in Iraq are just a continuation of the trend, Strikes on Iraqi crude facilities have affected output, removing an estimated 140,000 to 150,000 barrels per day from global supply. On Thursday, an explosive-laden drone struck an oilfield in the Iraq 's semi-autonomous Kurdish region − the latest in a series of attacks since early this month. Another drone fell in a village outside Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan Region. Futures 'continued to find support in the supply disruptions in the Middle East … the market remains sensitive to geopolitical risks, with price movements contingent on the pace of production recovery', said Li Xing, a financial markets strategist consultant at Cyprus-based broker Exness. Demand, however, has been reinforced by growing global consumption and seasonal factors, including increased summer travel in the Northern Hemisphere and higher refinery activity in Asia, but this strength 'could wane as the summer ends, potentially limiting further price appreciation', Ms Li added. Meanwhile, the EU on Friday approved fresh sanctions on Russia over its war with Ukraine, targeting its banking and oil sectors. This latest instalment of curbs include, in particular, restrictions on fuel products made from Russian petroleum and a revised oil price cap that is now set at 15 per cent below market rates. It would also affect a fleet of ships that transport Russian oil, in addition to cutting off Russian banks from the Swift international payment network. The sanctions are aimed at curbing Russia's energy sector, which is a key revenue stream for the Kremlin as the country is the world's third-biggest producer of crude oil and, along with Saudi Arabia, leads the Opec+ alliance of oil producing nations. This revised oil price cap 'has been specifically designed to further reduce Russia's revenues, while keeping global energy markets stable through continued supplies', said the European Commission. While supply concerns amid continuing trade geopolitical uncertainties continue to support prices, Opec has also raised its forecast for world oil and energy demand for the medium and long term. The producers' group, however, has cut oil demand projections for the next four years on account of economic slowdown in China, the world's second largest economy and top global crude importer. Global oil demand is projected to expand by nearly 19 per cent to reach 123 million barrels per day by 2050, Opec said in its latest World Oil Outlook 2050 report. In the medium term, oil demand is projected to increase by 9 per cent to 113.3 million bpd by 2030, from 103.7 million bpd in 2024. Overall energy demand in the long term is expected to increase by 23 per cent to reach 378 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2050, the oil production group said. However, it reduced its oil demand forecast for next four years over concerns of Chinese demand.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Banks are getting even better at making money no matter what: Morning Brief
Interest rates staying higher for longer, trade uncertainty lingering for months, and market volatility blasting through portfolios haven't stopped the nation's biggest banks from raking it in. What might be exasperating for many investors — whether it's people who need to convert their equities into cash or those relying on short-term gains — isn't all that bad for the financial services sector. This week, the five big Wall Street banks reported collective second quarter trading and investment banking revenues that rose 17% and 7%, respectively, compared to the same period last year. Sign up for the Yahoo Finance Morning Brief By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy For equities desks, the volatility isn't antithetical to prosperity; it's a source of it. Buying and selling stocks and other products for their clients is what matters, rather than the price direction. That's how the market gyrations of the past quarter, which inspired among retail investors an emotional roller coaster of fear, anxiety, relief, and excitement, also greatly profited the major banks. Whether the ticker charts went up or down mattered less than all that money shuffling around. And there was plenty of that. As my colleague Jake Conley reports, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) recorded some of its biggest one- and two-day swings during the past quarter. The flurry of events from the "Liberation Day" tariffs, the rollbacks and threats, and the Israel-Iran conflict rattled trading sessions. And while investors who had the stomach to peek at their 401(k) might have been sickened or reassured, depending on the day, banks were dutifully collecting fees in either direction. That's a testament to the adaptability and diversification of financial services — a theme we hit last quarter as well. In the same way that banks can thrive amid trading volatility, they can also prosper in different interest rate environments, even when the economic outlook worsens. Banks are even looking past — or through — the tariff uncertainty that economists have warned about. Bank executives made it clear this week that their corporate clients are moving forward with strategic plans despite shifting trade policy, giving the green light to mergers, raising debt, and going public. Whether the market is disregarding looming tariff deadlines or has embraced the White House vision of rebalancing trade is its own interesting story. Is some sort of Wall Street reckoning on the way? As JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently said, the markets could be underplaying the threats on the horizon as complacency and desensitization set in. Ultimately, it might not matter — for the banks, that is. Hamza Shaban is a reporter for Yahoo Finance covering markets and the economy. Follow Hamza on X @hshaban. Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices
CBS News
15-07-2025
- Business
- CBS News
What is the best age to buy an annuity at?
Retirement planning often feels like trying to hit a moving target. Just when you think you've figured out how much you need to save, inflation shifts the goalposts, market volatility throws you off balance and suddenly you're wondering if your Social Security benefits will be enough to cover any of your expenses during retirement. These types of issues are part of why more people are turning to annuities to lock down a reliable retirement income stream, one that guarantees you won't outlive your money. However, the timing of when you buy an annuity can make or break the benefits. While it might seem like waiting until later in life would guarantee the biggest annuity payout, that strategy doesn't always work, and neither does the flip side of that coin. Buying an annuity too early could lock you into lower returns and limit the growth potential, after all, while waiting too long can mean you miss out on years of steady income that could have supplemented Social Security or retirement savings. So, how do you know when to pull the trigger? Let's break down how your age impacts annuity payouts and what factors should guide your decision. Compare your annuity options online and lock in a great rate today. It's important to understand that the "best" age to purchase an annuity varies from one person to the next, as the right timing depends heavily on your financial goals in retirement. In general, though, annuity payouts are higher for older buyers because insurance companies use life expectancy to calculate payments. That means a 75-year-old will likely receive a larger monthly payout than a 65-year-old who invests the same amount, simply because they're expected to draw on the annuity for fewer years. But waiting to purchase an annuity isn't always the ideal approach. Many financial advisors recommend buying an annuity between the ages of 60 and 70. Purchasing during this window can help you avoid market risks while ensuring you still get significant payouts over time. Remember, though, that there are numerous types of annuities, and while it may make sense to purchase a fixed annuity between the ages of 60 and 70, the rules can differ for other annuity options. For example, deferred annuities grow tax-deferred until you start withdrawing funds, and buying this type of annuity earlier — let's say in your 50s — gives your money more time to grow. However, this strategy requires patience and some financial flexibility, as you won't see any immediate income benefits. Or, if you're leaning toward an immediate annuity to supplement your Social Security with guaranteed monthly payments, waiting until you're in your late 60s or early 70s to buy one often provides the highest payout ratio. That said, your health and life expectancy are also critical factors to consider during the process. If you're in excellent health and come from a family with a history of longevity, locking in an annuity earlier could ensure more years of income. Get prepared for retirement by adding an annuity to your portfolio now. If you're trying to time your annuity purchase correctly, it may benefit you to think about how an annuity fits into your overall financial picture rather than focusing on a particular age. Ask yourself: It's also worth considering laddering annuities, which is a strategy where you purchase multiple annuities at different times and rates to help balance payouts and flexibility. This allows you to hedge against locking all your money in at one particular rate. There's no universal answer to the question about the best age to buy an annuity. For many people, purchasing between ages 60 and 70 strikes a good balance between payout size and retirement income needs, but your health, lifestyle and financial situation, as well as the type of annuity you're planning to purchase, will ultimately determine what's right for you. If you're considering an annuity, it may benefit you to work with a financial advisor who understands your goals. They can help you evaluate whether buying now or waiting makes the most sense for your retirement plan. Timing isn't everything, but with annuities, it can make a significant difference in how much income you receive.
