My last post was about tradeoffs we must weigh when building investment portfolios. There’s no such thing as a magical asset. Most of the time we spend looking for superweapons (Wunderwaffen) is wasted. In this post I want to riff on Wunderwaffen from another angle: our fascination with things that are exciting conceptually but prove ineffective or even dangerous in practice.
This is a Messerschmitt Me-163 “Komet”.
The Komet was a rocket-powered interceptor designed to combat Allied bombers over Germany. Its distinguishing feature was its incredible speed–it could climb to combat altitude in just three minutes. One test pilot hit a speed of 700 mph in 1944. This set an unofficial world record that wasn’t broken until 1947, when Chuck Yeager set another unofficial record during a secret test flight. Officially, the flight airspeed record remained below 700 mph until 1953.
Unfortunately, the Komet’s incredible engine power was also the source of its greatest weakness. The volatile fuel mixture that fed the engine made it the rough equivalent of a flying bomb. The wiki on the Komet provides these details:
The fuel system was particularly troublesome, as leaks incurred during hard landings easily caused fires and explosions. Metal fuel lines and fittings, which failed in unpredictable ways, were used as this was the best technology available. Both fuel and oxidizer were toxic and required extreme care when loading in the aircraft, yet there were occasions when Komets exploded on the tarmac from the propellants’ hypergolic nature. […]
The corrosive nature of the liquids, especially for the T-Stoff oxidizer, required special protective gear for the pilots. To help prevent explosions, the engine and the propellant storage and delivery systems were frequently and thoroughly hosed down and flushed with water run through the propellant tanks and the rocket engine’s propellant systems before and after flights, to clean out any remnants. The relative “closeness” to the pilot of some 120 litres (31.7 US gal) of the chemically active T-Stoff oxidizer, split between two auxiliary oxidizer tanks of equal volume to either side within the lower flanks of the cockpit area—besides the main oxidizer tank of some 1,040 litre (275 US gal) volume just behind the cockpit’s rear wall, could present a serious or even fatal hazard to a pilot in a fuel-caused mishap.
Ultimately, the Komet had no impact on the European air war. It made very few kills and to the extent it did, its kill ratio was low. This disappointing operational performance hardly justified the many pilot deaths that occurred in development, testing and training.
There are lots of Komet-like investment products out there, including:
- Levered and inverse levered ETFs
- VIX Futures ETPs
- Naked option writing strategies
Most of us shouldn’t get anywhere near these products and strategies. I’ll make an allowance for my trader friends who have a deep and intuitive grasp of the market forces that shape changes in both realized and implied volatility. For us tourists, the leverage and short gamma exposure embedded in many of these products are every bit as dangerous as the Komet’s rocket fuel.
Here’s what an engine fire looks like for these strategies:
So why are we drawn to this stuff?
Mostly because it’s cool. It’s got Sophistication! It gives us an excuse to talk about things like the volatility risk premium. It makes us feel as if we’re part of some elite fraternity of financial markets people. We “get it.” “Have fun with your index funds, you buy-and-hold simpletons.”
Except really, the joke is on us.
We should never underestimate our deep-rooted weakness for Sophistication! Most of us got into this business at least partly because we’re smart and competitive. We’re captivated by that powerful rocket engine as a feat of human ingenuity. Deep down, we want a shot at that airspeed record.
But it’s not necessarily the most powerful, most sophisticated engine that’s going to win us the war. It might not even make a difference.
And if we’re not careful, it’ll blow up on us.
01/08/19 Addendum: Got into a Twitter discussion on this topic and Corey Hoffstein of Newfound Research was kind enough to educate me on how inverse and leveraged ETFs can be used in a DIY risk parity implementation for small investors. Here is the link to his article. So as always, it seems, #notall applies.