A week ago Monday I created an IEF (iShares Lehman 7-10 Yr Treas Bond) bear spread in my Schwab margin account—with the short calls deep in the money at S90. Several of the calls were assigned that night when IEF went ex-dividend ($0.248/share). Since I wasn’t long IEF, this assignment resulted in a short position being created in my account. I was surprised the calls were assigned since …
This spreadsheet allows you to enter in any trading date between 30-Jan-2009 and 11-Nov-2011 to backtest the profit/loss performance of a short VIX / short XIV strategy. See this post for more information and example charts. See ordering information at the very bottom of this post.
My count of volatility US-based ETPs trading on national exchanges is at 8 as of March 30th, 2022. New Additions: A new player in the volality ETP space, Volatility Shares, introduced two new ETFs, the -1X leveraged short term SVIX and the 2X leveraged UVIX on March 30th, 2022. These funds use two new Cboe indexes, SHORTVOL and LONGVOL which use time-weighted averages of VIX …
I have written several posts on dividend capture strategies. My favored, although far from perfect strategy: Dividend capture with covered calls Some approaches I don’t recommend: SPY dividend capture ideas that don’t work Dividend capture—three approaches to skip Additional background and tools, and an example: Dividend capture overview Covered calls–are you ready? Combo orders–maximizing profits on covered calls DIA dividend capture: creating the position DIA …
Easy way: If you want to short VXX the simplest way is to buy Volatility Share’s SVIX. This Exchange Traded Funds tracks -1X the daily percentage moves of VXX so it isn’t a true short, but it has the same goal—going up when VXX goes down. They carry annual investment fees (SVXY’s is 1.35%), which I doubt is an issue for you if you’re thinking …
