VOL04: Profiting from Short-Term Volatility ft. Bastian Bolesta
Top Traders Unplugged
Niels Kaastrup-Larsen
4.8 • 712 Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2021
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Special guest, Bastian Bolesta, joins Jason Buck today to discuss why volatility strategies should be added to our portfolios, how to keep improving as a trader while not over-optimising your systems, how recent large equity selloffs have affected Bastian’s approach to the markets, the average duration of his long volatility trades, how to weight recent data versus long-term data, trading VIX contracts intra-day, shorter-term Trend Following, momentum trading, mean-reversion strategies, and the cash efficiency of intraday models.
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In this episode, we discuss:
- Why we should be invested in volatility strategies
- Improving over time but not over-tinkering
- How much markets may have changed in recent years
- The average duration of volatility trades
- Recent data versus long-term data
- Shorter-term Trend Following
- The benefits of cash-efficiency within intraday models
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Episode TimeStamps:
00:00 - Intro
02:09 - Why should somebody add volatility strategies into their portfolio?
04:09 - How do you overcome the problem of getting better but not wanting to tinker too much?
11:03 - How has recent market behaviour affected your approach to volatility trading?
22:05 - What is the average duration of your long volatility trades?
28:02 - How do you weight recent data versus long-term data?
31:07 - How do you look at trading intra-day VIX contracts?
37:39 - What gave you the confidence to be able to execute short-term Trend Following?
48:58 - How do you approach momentum trading?
56:16 - Why do you take some of the long-sided trades during equity selloffs?
01:01:38 - Tell us about the mean-reverting products you deal with?
01:07:52 - Talk to us about the cash efficiency of intraday strategies
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Most of the traditional investment styles and asset classes could be categorized as shortball. |
| 0:12.0 | So if you're along equity or you're buying real estate, all these different investments |
| 0:18.8 | benefit from a rather steady environment, obviously |
| 0:22.1 | upwards trending equity market but not too volatile not too many surprises and this |
| 0:26.9 | implicit short-world position they get hurt if volatility hits market on the other |
| 0:32.3 | side you can develop trading strategies and programs approaches which benefit |
| 0:37.4 | from a spike in volatility or an |
| 0:39.6 | expansion volatility. |
| 0:41.5 | And as such, you can strengthen your overall portfolio with long-wall strategies so that |
| 0:47.2 | the overall portfolio gets much more stable. |
| 0:50.1 | You have someone who has your back basically in times of crisis, as seen over and over again, |
| 0:55.9 | and you get a better, more balanced portfolio by combining it. |
| 0:59.9 | For me, the best part of my podcasting journey has been the opportunity to speak to a huge |
| 1:05.4 | range of extraordinary investors from around the world. |
| 1:08.8 | In this series, I have invited one of them, namely Jason Buck, |
| 1:12.8 | to host a sequence of in-depth conversations on the topic of volatility. In today's world, |
| 1:18.5 | the concept of volatility has moved to the top of the agenda of many investors as they try to |
| 1:23.8 | analyze and understand the riskiness of their portfolios. With ever increasing uncertainty |
| 1:29.4 | around the globe, knowing if you are essentially long or short volatility in your portfolio |
| 1:34.3 | can mean the difference between ruin or survival when the next crisis emerge. The aim of these |
| 1:40.9 | conversations is to try and understand the experiences that have influenced these highly specialized investors |
| 1:47.0 | and the processes they follow to harness their returns in order to make all of us better informed investors. |
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