It all started with a note by JPM's Marko Kolanovic last Wednesday, in which he warned that the period of market calm is ending, and volatility was about to surge, which in a reflexive fashion would lead to accelerated selling by quant, systematic and risk-parity funds as a result of near-record leverage. According to Kolanovic while a driver of the recent market stability the "relatively stable macro data and a seasonal decline in trading activity" he explained that "a significant driver of the volatility collapse was derivatives hedging effects, also known as pinning", as well as the near all-time high leverage for Volatility Targeting and Risk Parity strategies. However, "this is all about to change as a number of important catalysts materialize this month (ECB, BOJ, Fed meetings), seasonals push market volatility higher, and leverage in systematic strategies and option positioning provide fuel for volatility."

For those who missed his must-read note, which predicted the Friday plunge with uncanny precision, this is what he said:

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So, following Friday's broad-based deleveraging across all quant, and certainly risk-party funds, the topic of forced selling has dominated sellside research, with BofA releasing a report overnight according to which "multi-asset vol controlled portfolios that use a systematic approach similar to our models may be subject to $12bn in global equity selling pressure in the coming days ahead. Likewise, we estimate about $40bn in global equity selling pressure via CTAs in the near term. Between the two, we could see ~$52bn in near-term selling pressure, half of which may be through US markets. Global equity selling pressure via CTAs could also increase as European and Asian markets had closed before a large portion of the move lower in US equities on Friday."

Even more interesting is BofA's comparison of what happened today with the post-Brexit selloff: according to BofA Friday was worse, as the notional volume traded in S&P 500 E-mini futures alone was $516bn. "While the current selling pressure we estimate from quant funds is only ~10% of the volume traded, the key question is if this is just the beginning of more volatility that ultimately puts more selling pressure on the market. In comparison with past shocks, during Brexit our models estimated ~$50bn of selling but only from CTAs and over a ten-day period in August-2015, ~$115bn from CTAs and ~70bn from multiasset risk-parity like funds. Importantly, in a fragile market with low conviction, the risk is that negative price action alone drives further selling."

So far this is precisely what is going on.

Here is the full note by BofA's Chintan Kotecha and team, which if correct, means even more pain for stocks in the coming days.

Record lull in volatility finally breaks as shock risk runs high

Through Thursday Sep 8th, the S&P 500 recorded its longest stretch (42 trading days) in history (since 1928) of trading within a range of 1.77%. Friday, this lull was broken as the S&P fell 2.45%, its largest daily move since Brexit. However, unlike the Brexit selloff, Treasuries also fell, causing a greater jump in multi-asset portfolio volatility. As we have highlighted, markets remain vulnerable to a shock as the recent low vol has pushed up leverage and long positioning across a range of investment strategies.

Low vol + rising equity = elevated leverage & positioning

In our weekly report two weeks ago, we noted the degree to which low volatility and rising equities could potentially be increasing leverage and long positioning from certain quantitative based funds. Specifically, our models showed leverage levels across multi-asset &other portfolios that target fixed volatility may have been at their max limits. As well, our bottom-up CTA model suggested that positioning in global equities via trend following managed futures funds could be at its highest levels since 2015. For both classes of funds, the theoretical risk of deleveraging can be highest when vol spikes up from low levels and when assets had been trending higher, much like environment prior to Friday. In addition, BofAML US quant strategy has recently noted that a number of long-only and hedge fund positioning metrics are back to 2015 or higher levels.

Declining equity/bond diversification leading to higher vol

Three-month correlation between the S&P 500 and 10-Year US Treasury bond prices set its YTD low on the Monday post-Brexit at -0.66. As a result, risk parity-style portfolios likely fared well through Brexit as sharp moves lower in global equities were diversified by the strong performance in bonds. In the almost three months since then, the correlation of daily moves between the two increased to -0.08 and over the last month alone, the correlation has turned positive to 0.27. Increasing correlation implies less diversification for risk parity-style portfolios and could be a precursor to higher vol.

Friday's shock alone likely larger than Brexit for quant funds.

As a result of Friday’s decline, we estimate multi-asset vol controlled portfolios that use a systematic approach similar to our models may be subject to $12bn in global equity selling pressure in the coming days ahead. Likewise, we estimate about $40bn in global equity selling pressure via CTAs in the near term. Between the two, we could see ~$52bn in near-term selling pressure, half of which may be through US markets. Global equity selling pressure via CTAs could also increase as European and Asian markets had closed before a large portion of the move lower in US equities on Friday.

While not dominant driver of flows; still key to watch

For perspective, on Friday, the notional volume traded in S&P 500 E-mini futures alone was $516bn. While the current selling pressure we estimate from quant funds is only ~10% of the volume traded, the key question is if this is just the beginning of more volatility that ultimately puts more selling pressure on the market. In comparison with past shocks, during Brexit our models estimated ~$50bn of selling but only from CTAs and over a ten-day period in August-2015, ~$115bn from CTAs and ~70bn from multi asset risk-parity like funds. Importantly, in a fragile market with low conviction, the risk is that negative price action alone drives further selling.