Goldman Says Traders More Worried Over Single Stocks Than Market
- Options skew falls for S&P 500 while rising for average shares
- Earnings reaction for stocks poised for the biggest since 2009
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. headquarters in New York.
Photographer: Christopher Lee/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
October has been a month of tectonic shifts in equities, when investors decided individual companies didn’t matter and braced for a storm that would knock everything over at once. Right? Wrong.
While benchmark indexes obviously bounced around a lot, there’s evidence the most micro of micro forces -- earnings -- remained the biggest focus of traders. One indication is in equity options used to hedge losses in shares. According to Goldman Sachs, the relative cost of protecting against swings in the broader market has plunged to the lowest this year. But for the average stock it’s the highest since February.