I used to share stock tips with my brothers-in-law. Before the tech crash I could offer up a few stocks I liked, and they would often make some money. The crash painfully ended the easy money and I moved on to index funds. They didn’t think indexes were near as much fun. One Easter one of my brothers-in-law asked what I was investing in. …
There haven’t been any new volatility ETNs or ETFs introduced for almost 4 months now, so it is about time for another wave. In April options were introduced on VelocityShares VIIX (a VXX wannabe), but it’s hard to see how these can compete effectively with VXX’s options. The funds that are attracting the most interest (and likely additional competitors) are VelocityShares’ 2X short term TVIX …
Update: XVIX was terminated by UBS. It joins the list of market strategies that backtested great but did horribly once if went live. UBS’ E-TRACS XVIX ETN was designed to take advantage of the volatility futures contango that torments Barclays’ popular VXX ETN. VXXB provides a way to go long on volatility—which in theory provides a good hedge against sudden market drops. However, since …
Guest contribution provided by Forex Traders As the global economy continues to emerge from the worldwide economic debacle of the last two years, investors have increasingly turned to risky assets in 2011. One could well argue that 2008, 2009, and 2010 were three of the most volatile years in the history of financial markets. In the forex market, we saw the most commonly traded currency …
Dan Haugh has written an interesting article in the CBOE’s “What’s On Our Minds” blog on asset correlation. I think the traditional allocation strategies that attempt to lower volatility in a portfolio and reduce risk are showing serious signs of old age. Technology trends (specifically ETFs / ETNs) are changing the way investors can invest, and traditional difficulties ( like the ability to directly …
