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Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

betagainst.fun

41–50 of 147 posts

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#41
post #3

Very cool, although index funds like S&P 500 and DJI don't seem to work. https://betagainst.fun/asset/_gspc_spy/ https://betagainst.fun/asset/_dji_dia/

That doesn't make any sense anyway. You're asking what are the highest and lowest correlations of the market against the market itself. You cannot compare the same or roughly the same basket of assets against itself.

Yes, it makes sense. An asset's correlation are with the broader stock market is quantifiable. See also: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/beta.asp

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#42
post #31
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can lose up to 100% of premium (which makes up 100% of your investment in that option) if you BOUGHT the put option. You can lose up to Strike Price minus the premium received if you SOLD the put option.

I know next nothing about option trading, but doesn't betting against a stock have infinite loses?

> I know next nothing about option trading, but doesn't betting against a stock have infinite loses?

the entire point of everything under discussion here is that "betting against a stock" can take multiple forms. if you'd like to pick one, google, or your interlocuters, could tell you what the maximum possible risk is.

keeping your money in cash is a form of betting against a whole lot of stocks simultaneously.

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#43
post #19

I can see the risk in short positions - you theoretically could lose an infinite amount (if you borrow X shares of something, sell them, but then can't find any to buy when it comes to returning them), and it's certainly possible to lose more than you put in (sell 100 short at $10 netting you $1000, price doubles overnight on new news, you have to buy $2000, losing a total of $1000 in the process. If price trippled o…

You can lose way, way more than what you "bet" in the first place with options. Check out optionstrat.com to play around and see strategies and results.

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#44
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty notorious for not working. With few exceptions, all stocks are correlated to the broad market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(finance) One explanation that would be popular right now is that the price of stocks can be calculated based on expected future cash flows and interest rates (e.g. think of what you'd pay for a bond that produces the same csh flow.) Since the interest rate is a factor in that…

People still do pair trading though, right?

That's kinda the opposite of what that site is advocating since in pair trading you are going long one and short the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pairs_trade

The most famous pair trade was this: in the morning of a trading day you buy the stocks that performed the worst yesterday and short the ones that performed the best. Because the market reverts to the mean, this strategy made money hand over fist from the 1980s when Morgan Stanley started using it until the summer of 2007 when somebody fat fingered a button, unwinded their position during the day, and crashed everybody else who was in this trade.

The profitability of that trade went downhill long before that crash but since then it's been impossible to make money doing it. (When there's a hedge fund bubble the profitability of a trade drops gradually as more people pile into it and the market inefficiency it targets is dispelled, quite different from an equity bubble which goes up dramatically until...)

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#45
post #40
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know next nothing about option trading, but doesn't betting against a stock have infinite loses?

Not with options. If you want to bet against a company you with options you can do it by either: 1. Buy a put. The put gives you the right to sell the stock at a certain price. If it goes below that price you make a profit, if it doesn’t your put is worthless. The maximum you can lose is what you paid for the put. 2. Sell a Call. This gives someone the right to buy the stock at a certain price (and you promise to sel…

> > doesn't betting against a stock have infinite loses?

> Not with options.

you maybe meant to say "not when you buy options":

> 2. Sell a Call. This gives someone the right to buy the stock at a certain price (and you promise to sell at that price). If the stock is below that price your profit is what you sold the call. Your maximum loss is infinite since a stock price has no (theoretical) limit.

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#46
Couple of random thoughts:

- Building things like this is always great. And its a fun site to poke around on.

- I would not count on this approach or expect it to be reliable in terms of actually hedging. Correlation, as a measure, has lots of issues. You are boiling down a lot of complex relationships into a single number. While it is convenient for many calculations, there are many problems. For example, many asset classes will go through periods with positive correlation and then later, negative correlation. This is due to a factor driving both securities price becoming more or less volatile compared to the other drivers. E.g., recent increased volatility around inflation expectations driving correlations between rates and equities. Whereas, few years ago, inflation was not driving anything.

- One alterative approach is to have a "risk model". Which essentially decomposes a security into drivers. Each security then represents a basket of these drivers. You can then use this model for range of purposes. While not perfect by any means, the model contains more information than a correlation. These too have a range of issues and creation and use is as much art as science.

- In general, you won't find many negative (or even very low) correlations across individual equities. Most stocks are driven by a common set shared risk factors that drive much of the risk. But if you can find negatively correlated securities (or lowly correlated), then that is certainly helpful.

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#47
post #7

I’ve often wondered the same thing, good on you for actually doing it. That said, in any set of 20+ variables there will be a 10 highest/10 lowest correlating. Without a good (specific, hard to vary) explanation as to why the correlation happens, I would not use this information to gamble real money.

It's the 10 highest and lowest SO FAR. If you track this over time, you will see that these change (often at times when you really want them not to). Past observances aren't super helpful in predicting fractal futures.

Would be interesting to see the differences in correlation from say 1980-2000 to 2000-2020. Of course that would exclude many of today's heavyweights.

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#48
post #33

Random question: Would it be illegal to use insider information to trade on the result of a correlated stock that you suspect will be affected by the actual company you have information about? (I mean I get that it probably is since you're using insider information but wouldn't it be really hard to prove.) Just curious, I'm not intending on doing it myself.

Yes it is illegal, but happens nonetheless. Matt Levine wrote about this quite often, you can find it by searching „Money Stuff Shadow Trading“ for example

Yup this seems to explain it pretty well. (Though he does talk about how my mentioned scenario is a bit of a grey area, and that barely anyone seems to have gotten in trouble for it.) If anyone else is curious: https://web.archive.org/web/20220129121919/https://www.bloom...

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#49
post #20

Are you also considering time lagged correlations? To me I don't care if a certain stock is correlated by something, I would more like to know which stocks do have correlations or if there are correlations with a time lag

I was thinking the same thing. To know that ABC follows DEF by x days with 95% accuracy would be a superpower in investing.

Of course, the problem with something like this is that using it would, of course, ultimately change the market so that x→0.

Re: Show HN: Find the 10 highest and 10 lowest correlations to any stock

#50
post #19

I can see the risk in short positions - you theoretically could lose an infinite amount (if you borrow X shares of something, sell them, but then can't find any to buy when it comes to returning them), and it's certainly possible to lose more than you put in (sell 100 short at $10 netting you $1000, price doubles overnight on new news, you have to buy $2000, losing a total of $1000 in the process. If price trippled o…

If you are buying options (i.e., you have the optionality), youre downside is limited. If you are selling options, that isn't necessarily the case.
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