At the moment investment grade bonds with their low yields and risky exposure to interest rates are unattractive places to put your money. Broad equity indexes like the S&P 500 have higher potential gains and dividend yields in the 2% range, but the dramatic drawdowns of 2008/2009 are still fresh in our minds. Commodities like gold and oil look expensive—so where is a …
If you need options on the S&P 500 the CBOE’s SPX series is one of the most popular solutions in the marketplace. The CBOE continues to enhance this product with additional expirations—the latest being the addition of options expiring on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the spring of 2022. These products were immediately successful. With all the days of the week covered it will interesting …
The VIX Futures market has been on a bit of a tear—driven by inflows into volatility ETFs like Barclays’ VXX, VelocityShares’ XIV and TVIX, and ProShares’ UVXY. The chart below shows the resultant growth in the short term futures open interest and volume. The data doesn’t look as dramatic if we change the vertical axis to a logarithmic scale—a scale that makes it easier to …
I have backtested Barclays’ VQT ETN back to when VIX volatility futures first started to trade in March 2004. I have made two versions of the spreadsheet available for purchase below. One with results data only and the other version with formulas and required indexes included. I have included the simulated daily closing values including the 0.95% annual fee from March 29, 2004, until June …
Currently TVIX is running about 5% high compared to its indicative value. The combination of Credit Suisse making shares available to borrow, plus the knowledge that limited share creation might start on March 28th was enough to restore relative sanity to TVIX’s price. As you can see below it didn’t take a lot of new shares to pull TVIX back close to its indicative value. …
