​Weekly Bulletin: May 4 – 8

Our inaugural U.S. equity conference is only two weeks away. There’s still time to sign up to hear the latest EQD and vol thinking from 36 South, AIG, Caxton, Gladius, Koch Industries, Ontario Teachers and a host of other top officials.. Our latest addition to the agenda is Benn Eifert, a principal and portfolio manager at Mariner Investment Group. He joins Artemis Capital Management’s Chris Cole and Capstone Investment Advisors’ Jordan Sinclair on the kick-off panel. Join them at Global EQD 2015 May 20-21. Go to eqderivatives.com/events for further details. In this week’s coverage, we talk to one portfolio manager turning to long volatility on TLT, as equity vol underperforms as a hedge. We also track VIX options trading this week, following comments from Fed Chair Yellen that the equity market was overvalued. In Europe, BNP Paribas is to offer structured products on the Solactive oekom Ethical Low Volatility Index to retail and institutional clients in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia while in Asia, hedge funds and asset managers are increasingly buying downside protection on the HSCEI, resulting in short dated skew normalising in the index.