Stock Traders Are Dumping Virus Hedges After ‘Peak Fear’ Passes

  • Demand for protection matches levels before epidemic hit news
  • Time to exit risk-off hedges but too soon for risk-on: Citi
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

Worrywarts on Wall Street fretting traders are being complacent may want to look away from options markets right now.

Investors are sending demand for protection back to levels seen before the coronavirus became an epidemic, heeding the advice of Citigroup Inc. to ditch hedges. With panic cooling about a diseaseBloomberg Terminal which continues to claim new victims after killing 636 people and infecting 31,000 in China, derivatives markets are all but ready to consign it to history.