AGG should go ex-dividend on Thursday--last month's payout was .33, so I expect a similar amount. I bought AGG at 104.72 and bought PST, which is a double inverse 7 to 10 year term treasury bond ETF at 52.36. I did a couple of quick samples that showed PST moves at about 4 times the percentage move of AGG. I could be pretty wrong on this--I just checked a couple of random time periods. I was just looking for something that would compensate for my AGG position if the bond market in general went south.
To set up the hedge I want the dollar changes in the AGG to be offset by the inverse changes in PST. If I bought 100 shares of AGG, that would be $10,472--since PST moves at -4X the rate I would buy $10472/4 of PST or around $2618. PST was at 52.3 at that point so I divided 2618/52.3 which gives 50.057 shares. So for every 100 shares of AGG I bought 50 shares of PST as a hedge. These ratios have to be refigured each time a position is put in place depending on share prices, it is just coincidence that they ended at a 2 to 1 ratio this time. This hedge is not suitable for a long term holding because of the inherent behavior of ultra-short ETFs but it should be fine for the relatively short time I hope to hold this position (less than a week). My exit point is an overall $0.33 per share gain on my AGG--with or without the dividend.
PST apparently does not do regular distributions (which is not unexpected it being an inverse fund)--I checked to make sure. They do capital gains distributions occasionally. If the hedge is perfect I would hope to exit at the same investment level in absolute dollars on the shares--and collect the AGG dividend.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment