Whether you are long or short volatility ETP’s, you really ought to know what you are trading. Here are a few essential facts about UVXY, VXX, TVIX, and VIXY: UVXY – ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures ETF Inception date: October 3, 2011 Expense ratio: 0.95% Optionable: Yes VXX – iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN…
Today I received a heartbreaking e-mail from one of my YouTube subscribers: I just watched your YouTube video about losing money in the stock market. To be honest with you, I’m going through quite a hard time right now. This is probably my second or third attempt at trading after failing before and I’m currently…
The temptation to buy UVXY/TVIX/VXX/VIXY/etc. when the VIX is low can be pretty strong at times. As I write this, it’s the third consecutive bright green day for the S&P 500; yesterday the VIX closed barely above 9. Surely that was an ideal time to buy UVXY, right? Wrong. As we can see in the…
So, you’re thinking about shorting UVXY/TVIX/VXX/VIXY/etc.? Or selling calls on UVXY/VXX? If so, please be advised that these types of trades have “undefined risk,” meaning that you could potentially lose not only everything in your brokerage account, but you could end up owing your broker even more money than you actually possess. All it would…
If you have less than $25,000 in your trading account, you might feel left out when you see short vol traders aggressively short-selling UVXY/TVIX/VXX or selling UVXY/VXX call options. Indeed, due to the typically high margin requirements, you might not even have permission from your broker to short-sell these ETP’s or to sell calls on…
It’s funny how whenever the stock market goes down more than a few percentage points (yes, that has been known to happen from time to time), the mainstream media dusts off their “MARKETS IN TURMOIL” graphics and pumps out opinion pieces asking the reader to consider whether this might be the beginning of the end…
For volatility ETP (exchange-traded product) traders, there are a range of products from which to choose. Some are relatively illiquid (an example would be VMAX), while others have sufficient daily volume to appeal to active traders such as myself. For traders who aren’t particularly interested in dealing with the sometimes massive volatility of leveraged ETP’s…...
