Recent weeks have unnerved investors around the world, starting with U.S. markets gyrating wildly from a loss of 390 points to a gain of 480 points just last week. Such volatility, while not unique, has been a good predictor of major market events. Our study also reveals that the Hong Kong market has outperformed the U.S. recently even as its volatility drops below that of US markets.
While US markets called for calm, they emphasized the size of the gain, the second largest in history. Unfortunately, actual relevant statistics seem to have been lost in the melee. While a recent day's gain was indeed the second largest point gain ever, this translates into only the...