For a long time investors have been frustrated in their desire to directly invest in the VIX index. Now three ETNs, one by design, and the two other perhaps by accident are tracking (or out-performing) the VIX index on both a daily percentage move basis and for multi-day holding times. Historically the daily percentage moves of short term (1/2 month) volatility ETNs like VXX tend …
Barclays’ XVZ volatility ETN is intended to allow investors to profit from volatility jumps without the contango losses that drag down approaches like Barclays’ VXX short term and VXZ medium term long only products. To accomplish this XVZ switches between 11 different mixes of short term and medium term positions in volatility futures. In volatile times there can be a different setting every day. The …
Almost everyone that invests would love to have a cost-effective way to insure against market declines. Securities that allow you to go long on volatility are attractive because they tend to go up when the market goes down, but none of them, when sized to really protect an investment are affordable in a “set and forget” sort of way. The first generation volatility ETNs …
I understand how stock splits, forward and reverse can confuse novice investors, but I was shocked to see Reuters Money publishing a guest post titled: “An inside look at a bad stock trade.” This investor’s analysis of VXX’s 4:1 reverse split was: “Such a split means that investors would have one-fourth of the shares they owned before the split, but at four times the …
One of the scariest things about market panics is their unpredictability. All of us remember the dark days of 2008 and 2009, not so many the October 1987 crash. For me, both of those crashes carried the same sense of disruption—the feeling that things would never be quite the same again. I’ve been looking at the history of volatility because it’s clear to me …
