(Bloomberg) — Traders are piling into options tied to fixed-income ETFs at a record pace, in a rush to position portfolios with yields on 10-year and 30-year Treasuries at the highest in two decades.
Options trading volume on BlackRock Inc.’s iShares 20 Year Treasury Bond ETF (ticker TLT) is soaring, with the 20-day average hitting the highest level ever for the exchange—traded fund. Open interest, or the existing positions held by investors, has more than doubled over the past year, and is closing in on the record of 13.55 million contracts reached prior to monthly expiration last week.
The jump in bond yields has been accompanied by wider swings, driving up the cost of options to protect against bigger moves. Implied volatility and the premium for bearish puts on TLT have jumped to the highest since late March as investors pay up for protection against — or for wagers on — higher yields.
“We’re currently seeing some of the highest trading volumes in Treasuries, investment-grade and high-yield ETFs,” said Steve Laipply, global co-head of BlackRock’s iShares Fixed Income ETFs.
“Options on those exposures are becoming increasingly popular because they provide access to exposures that would be difficult to replicate efficiently in the underlying bond market.”
The surging volumes show how institutional and even some retail traders are adopting options on ETFs to navigate the bond-market sell off, in addition to investors’ longstanding use of swaps or futures traded on exchanges like CME Group Inc.
The spike in options volumes over the last week has extended to BlackRock’s iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD) and the firm’s iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG).
On Moomoo, a digital broker owned by Futu Holdings that has marketed itself increasingly to US retail investors, traders last week bought options that pay off if there’s a further decline in TLT. Clients were “signaling expectations that bond yields would continue to rise,” Neil McDonald, CEO of Moomoo US, said in an email.
ETFs also give fund managers with an equities-only mandate a way to hedge interest-rate risk, by trading exposure wrapped in a stock. ETF share prices change based on the current value of the securities they hold.
“We’re definitely seeing investors that are traditionally more focused in the equity world extend their focus into what’s going on in the rates market,” said Alex Kosoglyadov, head of flow equity derivative sales at Nomura Holdings.
“What we have seen is we’ve had a lot of traditional equity investors that will really dabble only in the equity volatility market start to look more and more at these rate products.”
–With assistance from Sunil Kesur.
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