No, the VIX is Not Broken

Hardly a month goes by without some pundit trumpeting that the VIX is broken. But before you worry too much, consider some of the non-obvious characteristics of the Cboe’s Fear Gauge. I often hear people in the finance industry saying that “The VIX® is broken”.  The specifics of what they say varies a lot, but the typical pronouncements go something like this: These boil down …

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A Better Way to Model the VIX

Models are useful. They help us understand the world around us and aid us in predicting what will happen next. But it’s important to remember that models don’t necessarily reflect the underlying reality of the thing we’re modeling. The Ptolemaic model of the solar system assumed the Earth was the center of everything but in spite of that spectacular error, it did a good job of …

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Near Real Time Graphical VIX Term Structure

Anyone that follows volatility closely knows that short term views on volatility are much more dynamic than longer term. For example, if the market is moving from a dip into a “V” style recovery the CBOE’s 9 day expectation of volatility VXST, will drop much more than the 30 day VIX. A chart showing volatility expectations vs time is called a volatility term structure.  The …

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Volatility Related Indexes: Historical Data, Methodology

Unless you have access to a Bloomberg terminal or something similar finding quotes and historical data for volatility indexes can be an adventure.  Below I’ve assembled links to the online resources that I’ve been able to find.  Links marked with a “$SFI” are historical data sets that I offer for sale—they don’t match the official indexes exactly, but they are very close. In many cases, …

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Graphical VIX calculation & Term Structure

The chart below graphically represents the calculation for the Cboe’s VIX® with near-real-time (20-minute delayed) data, The actual VIX is located on the black dotted line in the left-center of the graph. Click here for a larger snapshot for 12-Nov-2014. The VIX now uses interpolation between two VIX style calculations (VIN and VIF) on SPX options series that are a week apart—bracketing the 30-day target horizon …

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