Do your homework.
That's the top advice WallachBeth Capital's Andrew McOrmond can give investors right now as they navigate the stock market's manic moves.
"The best thing that investors can do is learn all their options of execution, learn all the routes that they can use versus trading on the open and close," McOrmond, his firm's managing director of ETF trading solutions, said Monday on CNBC's "ETF Edge."
"We need to continue to educate people because, usually, the bad trades are just kind of mistakes that occur in order flow entry, and that can certainly be rectified by more education," he said.
For those actively trading this whipsawing market, McOrmond got a little more specific.
"We do know very active traders that don't use options. I think options are a great thing," he said. "I would focus on listed options, listed index options and ETF options, but understand that vol[atility] is high and understand the pricing, meaning that you are going to pay up to put your idea on and, certainly, there's risk in selling those ideas."
Another way to avoid buying shares of equities directly as they continue their wild swings is to consider liquid alternatives, or baskets of securities with exposure to things like real estate, private equity and hedge funds, McOrmond said.
"For ETFs themselves as listed tickers, you could look at liquid alts like QAI and MNA, which are less correlated to the overall market and can dampen volatility," he said, referring to IndexIQ's Hedge Multi-Strategy Tracker ETF and Merger Arbitrage ETF, respectively.
Lastly, McOrmond called on investment advisors and strategists to formalize their processes when serving clients.
"Do everything you can to institutionalize your order flow in times like these, meaning have out all your options on the table, use professionals, don't let multi-multi-million-dollar notional orders go into retail pipes to be executed," he said. "It's time to institutionalize that flow. I think that would help a lot."
Tom Lydon, CEO of ETF Trends and president of Global Trends Investments, commended the ETF industry's resilience in the same "ETF Edge" interview.
"We're always looking for that chink in the armor and we haven't found it yet," Lydon said. "We're cheering on the ETF business for sure. It's doing what it's supposed to do at this point. Going forward, I think [McOrmond's] words of wisdom about being calm, sticking to your long-term model, is important. If you're trading, make sure you're efficient in your trading."
