March Triple Witching Day Has Been Volatile
Posted: 18 Mar 2021 02:58 PM PDT
I just wanted to remind everyone that Triple Witching Day in
March has exhibited some measurable volatility over the years. Tomorrow is also
the 15th trading day of March, which earns one of our angry bear
icons on page 35 of the 2021 Stock
Trader’s Almanac as the 15th trading of March has been down 15
times in the last 21 years on the S&P 500 or up only 28.6% of the time as
noted by the “S: 28.6” in the image
above.
Stock options, index options, index futures, and
single-stock/ETF futures all expire at the same time four times each year on
the third Friday of March, June, September and December. This event is often
referred to as Quadruple Witching or as we prefer to call it in the Stock Trader’s Almanac (2021 page 106),
Triple Witching as single-stock/ETF futures have little impact on the market.
As it is written in this year’s Almanac March
Triple-Witching Day has been mixed the last 30 years, but the Dow and S&P
500 have been up 4 of the last 6 and NASDAQ has been up 5 of the last 6. Last
year you will remember the market got crushed on March TWD.
