Barclays’ VZZB Bites the Dust

Update Friday, October 5th, 2012 | Vance Harwood VZZB‘s intraday indicative (Yahoo) value dropped below $10 Friday October 5th, triggering its automatic termination event.   According to the prospectusthe holders of record will receive a cash payout value set by the closing intraday indicative value (IV)  for the day—provided it is between 0 and 10.   Since the final IV was 10.45, the redemption value …

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Taming Inverse Volatility with a Simple Ratio

Update This article was first posted in September 2012.  The strategy outlined below worked well until August 2013 and then basically went sideways for over 3 years before perking up again in 2017—when virtually any short volatility strategy worked.  I’ve updated the chart and the verbiage to reflect those changes.  In September 2017 the Cboe renamed its VXV index as VIX3M.  The Cboe does not …

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Volatility Landscape: And Then There Were 20

News Recently UBS announced that they shutting down 12 of their 13 volatility based funds.  They never gathered the assets needed to make them going concerns. After a long drought we have a new USA based Volatility ETP.   First Trust’s CBOE S&P 500 Tail Hedge ETF—ticker VIXH started trading last week, bringing us to a total of 20 US volatility funds (see Volatility Tickers for the full list).   This …

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2023 PIMCO Ex-Div & Pay Dates: BOND, MINT, MUNI, HYS, TIPZ, etc.

The 2023 Ex-Dividend and Pay Date information below is based on my estimates.  I was not able to find official information from PIMCO for 2023.  Monthly Paying Funds 2023 Ex-Dividend Dates (estimates) 1-Feb 1-Mar 3-Apr 1-May 1-June 3-Jul 1-Aug 1-Sept 2-Oct 1-Nov 1-Dec 12-Dec (cap gains) 29-Dec  Pay / Distribution Dates (estimates) 6-Feb 6-Mar 6-Apr 4-May 5-June 7-July 4-Aug 7-Sept 6-Oct 6-Nov 6-Dec 15-Dec (cap …

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VIX and VXV Show SPX Term Structure at Historic Highs

This post was 1st published August, 2012. In addition to the well-known VIX index, the CBOE also publishes the VXV index.  It’s computed just like VIX, except that it gauges the implied volatility of SPX options 3 months out, rather than just one month. The chart below shows the 10-year history of these two indexes. < Recently I posted on how the medium term time structure …

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