Vance Harwood

2023 Ex-Div & Paydates Schwab: FNDB, FNDX, FNDA

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2023 Schwab ETF Ex-Dividend and Pay date information Schwab has now published their ex-dividend / pay dates for all of their no-fee ETFs.  The published dates are: Quarterly Distributions:  FINDB, FNDX, FNDA 2023 Ex-Dividend Dates Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 22-March 21-June 20-September 6-December 28-December  (potential cap gains div) Pay / Distribution Dates 27-March 26-June 25-September 11-December 3-January-2024 (potential cap gains dist) Schwab Fundamental U.S. Broad Market Index …

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Assignment Risk, Short Calls, And Ex-Dividend Dates

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If you are short call options in a stock or an Exchange Traded Product (ETP) like SPY or IWM you need to be aware of ex-dividend dates.  If your calls are in the money, even barely, your options may be assigned right before the security goes ex-dividend—and then you may have a problem. For example, let’s say you hold a credit call spread position: short …

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Backtest of VXX Volatility ETN From 2004 Including Yearly Fees

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Volatility based Exchange Traded Funds and Notes (ETF / ETN) have only been on the market for a few years (see volatility tickers for the full list of USA based funds).  The oldest one, Barclays’ VXX only started trading in late January 2009.   Because of their relative youth, we don’t have actual trade data on how they would have performed through critical periods—for example, …

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If There’s Liquidity It’s Not A Short Squeeze

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I’m seeing a lot of articles (e.g., here) warning about a possible short squeeze in volatility.  At the risk of being a curmudgeon, it appears to me that people don’t know what a short squeeze is. Sure, if you’re short something that starts going up rapidly (e.g., Achman with Herbalife), life is not good. There’s a positive feedback loop when people closing out their short positions have …

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