David Jane: Embrace the return of volatility

There has been much commentary regarding equity market volatility of late, attributing it to factors such as trade wars, inflation, Donald Trump or even the Russians. Our own view is that the return of volatility is absolutely normal and to be expected - even embraced. For most of history, volatility has stayed around current levels - we have only seen it drop to an abnormally low point in the past few years. Reasons often given for the period of ultra-low volatility include QE and a very benign market environment. It is much more likely, however, the ‘short volatility' strategy, which h...