Investor Education

Volatility 101: An Introduction to Market Volatility

Published

4 years ago

August 15, 2018

Jeff Desjardins

Volatility 101: An Introduction to Market Volatility

Almost all assets see fluctuations in value over time.

But while price swings are a common phenomenon in most asset classes that exist, they are the most famous in the stock market.

These upward and downward movements in price are known as volatility, which is defined as “a measure of the frequency and severity of price movement in a given market”.

Understanding Volatility

Today’s infographic comes to us from Fisher Investments, and it serves as an introduction to the concept of volatility, along with offering a perspective on volatility’s impact on investments.

Why are certain times more volatile than others?

In the short term, volatility is driven by changes in demand, which is largely related to changes in earnings expectations. These expectations can be affected by:

Earnings reports
New economic data
Company leadership changes
New innovations
Herd mentality
Political changes
Interest rate changes
Market sentiment swings
Other events (economic, political, etc.)

Often the media and investors assign certain narratives to price changes, but the reality is that the stock market is very complex, and has many underlying factors that drive movements.

What ultimately matters for volatility is demand: if stocks move up or down on a given day, we can say definitively that demand for stock was more (or less) than stock supply.

Calculating Volatility

Technically speaking, volatility is a statistical measure of the dispersion of returns for a given security or market index over a specific timeframe.

In other words, two stocks may have the same average rate of return over a year, but one may have daily moves of 1%, while the other may jump around by 5% each day. The latter stock has a higher standard deviation of returns, and thus has higher volatility.

Here’s what you need to know about standard deviation, which is a common measure of volatility:

Roughly 68% of returns fall within +/-1 standard deviation
To calculate standard deviation, differences must be squared. This means negative and positive differences are combined
Standard deviation tells you how likely a particular value is, based on past data
Standard deviation doesn’t, however, show you the direction of movement

This all gets more interesting as we look at the market as a whole, in which thousands of stocks (each with their own individual volatility) are moving up and down simultaneously.

Market Volatility

Now that you can see how volatility plays out with individual stocks, it makes sense that market volatility is the overall volatility from the vast collection of stocks that make up the market.

In the United States, the most watched stock market index is the S&P 500 – a collection of 500 of the largest companies listed in the country. One measure of the volatility of the S&P 500 is the CBOE Volatility Index, or as it is known by its ticker symbol, the VIX.

Volatility and market sentiment in the overall market are important, because humans tend to experience the pain of loss more acutely than the upside of gains – and this can impact short-term decision making in the markets.

Negative price swings in the wider market can be distressful and unnerving for investors, and high volatility does present some challenges:

Uncertainty in the markets can lead to fear, which can lead investors to make decisions they may otherwise not make
If certain cashflows are needed at a later date, higher volatility means a greater chance of a shortfall
Higher volatility also means a wider distribution of possible final portfolio values

That said, volatility also represents a chance of better returns than expected – and for long-term investors that are patient, volatility can help drive outcomes.

Related Topics:investing volatility s&p 500 stocks market vix

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Technology

Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity

Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. Here’s what investors need to know about the future of cybersecurity.

Written By

Marcus Lu

Graphics & Design

Sam Parker

Published August 11, 2022 • Updated August 30, 2022 •

Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity

In 2020, the global cost of cybercrime was estimated to be around $945 billion, according to McAfee.

It’s likely even higher today, as multiple sources have recorded an increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks during the pandemic.

In this infographic from Global X ETFs, we highlight three major trends that are shaping the future of the cybersecurity industry that investors need to know.

Trend 1: Increasing Costs

Research from IBM determined that the average data breach cost businesses $4.2 million in 2021, up from $3.6 million in 2017. The following table breaks this figure into four components:

Cost Component	Value ($)
Cost of lost business	$1.6M
Detection and escalation	$1.2M
Post breach response	$1.1M
Notification	$0.3M
Total	$4.2M

The greatest cost of a data breach is lost business, which results from system downtimes, reputational losses, and lost customers. Second is detection and escalation, including investigative activities, audit services, and communications to stakeholders.

Post breach response includes costs such as legal expenditures, issuing new accounts or credit cards (in the case of financial institutions), and other monitoring services. Lastly, notification refers to the cost of notifying regulators, stakeholders, and other third parties.

To stay ahead of these rising costs, businesses are placing more emphasis on cybersecurity. For example, Microsoft announced in September 2021 that it would quadruple its cybersecurity investments to $20 billion over the next five years.

Trend 2: Remote Work Opens New Vulnerabilities

According to IBM, companies that rely more on remote work experience greater losses from data breaches. For companies where 81 to 100% of employees were remote, the average cost of a data breach was $5.5 million (2021). This dropped to $3.7 million for companies that had under 10% of employees working from home.

A major reason for this gap is that work-from-home setups are typically less secure. Phishing attacks surged in 2021, taking advantage of the fact that many employees access corporate systems through their personal devices.

Type of Attack	Number of attacks in 2020	Number of attacks in 2021	Growth (%)
Spam phishing	1.5M	10.1M	+573%
Credential phishing	5.5M	6.2M	+13%

As detected by Trend Micro’s Cloud App Security.

Spam phishing refers to “fake” emails that trick users by impersonating company management. They can include malicious links that download ransomware onto the users device. Credential phishing is similar in concept, though the goal is to steal a person’s account credentials.

A tactic you may have seen before is the Amazon scam, where senders impersonate Amazon and convince users to update their payment methods. This strategy could also be used to gain access to a company’s internal systems.

Trend 3: AI Can Reduce the Cost of a Data Breach

AI-based cybersecurity can detect and respond to cyberattacks without any human intervention. When fully deployed, IBM measured a 20% reduction in the time it takes to identify and contain a breach. It also resulted in cost savings upwards of 60%.

A prominent user of AI-based cybersecurity is Google, which uses machine learning to detect phishing attacks within Gmail.

Machine learning helps Gmail block spam and phishing messages from showing up in your inbox with over 99.9% accuracy. This is huge, given that 50-70% of messages that Gmail receives are spam.
– Andy Wen, Google

As cybercrime escalates, Acumen Research and Consulting believes the market for AI-based security solutions will reach $134 billion by 2030, up from $15 billion in 2021.

Introducing the Global X Cybersecurity ETF

The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (Ticker: BUG) seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Indxx Cybersecurity Index. See below for industry and country-level breakdowns, as of June 2022.

Sector (By security type)	Weight
Cloud	28.0%
Network	25.1%
Identity	17.7%
Internet	15.0%
Endpoint	12.8%

Country	Weight
🇺🇸 U.S.	71.6%
🇮🇱 Israel	13.2%
🇬🇧 UK	8.2%
🇯🇵 Japan	5.5%
🇰🇷 South Korea	0.9%
🇨🇦 Canada	0.6%

Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.

Investors can use this passively managed solution to gain exposure to the rising adoption of cybersecurity technologies.

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Investor Education

Countries with the Highest Default Risk in 2022

In this infographic, we examine new data that ranks the top 25 countries by their default risk.

Published

3 months ago

July 13, 2022

Marcus Lu

Countries with the Highest Default Risk in 2022

In May 2022, the South Asian nation of Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt for the first time. The country’s government was given a 30-day grace period to cover $78 million in unpaid interest, but ultimately failed to pay.

Not only does this impact Sri Lanka’s economic future, but it also raises an important question: which other countries are at risk of default?

To find out, we’ve used data from Bloomberg to rank the countries with the highest default risk.

The Sovereign Debt Vulnerability Ranking

Bloomberg’s Sovereign Debt Vulnerability Ranking is a composite measure of a country’s default risk. It’s based on four underlying metrics:

Government bond yields (the weighted-average yield of the country’s dollar bonds)
5-year credit default swap (CDS) spread
Interest expense as a percentage of GDP
Government debt as a percentage of GDP

To better understand this ranking, let’s focus on Ukraine and El Salvador as examples.

Country	Rank	Government Bond Yield (%)	5Y CDS Spread	Interest Expense (% of GDP)	Government Debt (% of GDP)
🇸🇻 El Salvador	1	31.8%	3,376 bps (33.76%)	4.9%	82.6%
🇺🇦 Ukraine	8	60.4%	10,856 bps (100.85%)	2.9%	49%

1 basis point (bps) = 0.01%

Why are Ukraine’s Bond Yields so High?

Ukraine has high default risk due to its ongoing conflict with Russia. To understand why, consider a scenario where Russia was to assume control of the country. If this happened, it’s possible that Ukraine’s existing debt obligations will never be repaid.

That scenario has prompted a sell-off of Ukrainian government bonds, pushing their value down to nearly 30 cents on the dollar. This means that a bond with face value of $100 could be purchased for $30.

Because yields move in the opposite direction of price, the average yield on these bonds has climbed to a very high 60.4%. As a point of comparison, the yield on a U.S. 10-year government bond is currently 2.9%.

What is a CDS Spread?

Credit default swaps (CDS) are a type of derivative (financial contract) that provides a lender with insurance in the event of a default. The seller of the CDS represents a third party between the lender (investors) and borrower (in this case, governments).

In exchange for receiving coverage, the buyer of a CDS pays a fee known as the spread, which is expressed in basis points (bps). If a CDS has a spread of 300 bps (3%), this means that to insure $100 in debt, the investor must pay $3 per year.

Applying this to Ukraine’s 5-year CDS spread of 10,856 bps (108.56%), an investor would need to pay $108.56 each year to insure $100 in debt. This suggests that the market has very little faith in Ukraine’s ability to avoid default.

Why is El Salvador Ranked Higher?

Despite having lower values in the two metrics discussed above, El Salvador ranks higher than Ukraine because of its larger interest expense and total government debt.

According to the data above, El Salvador has annual interest payments equal to 4.9% of its GDP, which is relatively high. Comparing to the U.S. once more, America’s federal interest costs amounted to 1.6% of GDP in 2020.

When totaled, El Salvador’s outstanding debts are equal to 82.6% of GDP. This is considered high by historical standards, but today it’s actually quite normal.

The next date to watch will be January 2023, as this is when the country’s $800 million sovereign bond reaches maturity. Recent research suggests that if El Salvador were to default, it would experience significant, yet temporary, negative effects.

Another Hot Topic for El Salvador: Bitcoin

In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. This means that Bitcoin is recognized by law as a means to settle debts and other obligations.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) criticized this decision in early 2022, urging the country to revoke legal tender status. In hindsight, these warnings were wise, as Bitcoin’s value has fallen by 56% year-to-date.

While this isn’t directly related to El Salvador’s default risk, it does open potential avenues for relief. For instance, large players in the crypto space may be willing to assist the government to keep the concept of “nation-state bitcoin adoption” alive.