The last three months saw the VIX spot dropped quickly from 30-ish to 10-ish. No wonder XIV, the inverse ETN to the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index, was among the top performing ETPs in January. Its return was 30.88% in January 2012 and 14.02% in December 2011. S&P Indices General Disclaimer XIV collects daily [...]
Today I’m going to discuss three prepacked investment solutions that seek positive exposure to the equity market with different volatility reduction approaches: S&P 500 Low Volatility Index: uses stock selection and alternative weighting to minimize portfolio volatility without the use of derivatives or active hedge. PowerShares has issued an ETF (ticker SPLV) that tracks this [...]
In Europe, ETFs and ETNs linked to the S&P 500 VIX Futures Indices and the VSTOXX Futures Indices collectively have nearly $380 million in assets ), as listed in Exhibit 1 (note: volume is the average daily volume in December 2011). Exhibit 1: Exchange Traded Volatility Products in Europe (Dec. 2011) Compared with the S&P [...]
As in the VIX index spot, the S&P 500 VIX Futures Index Series and the S&P 500 tend to move in opposite directions or. As shown in Exhibit 1, while the correlation between the spot VIX and the futures index series is not perfect, it is a healthy 89% for the short-term index and 80% [...]
In Europe, regional volatility indices have been developed and published to measure the implied volatility in local markets. VSTOXX, VDAX-NEW, VFTSE follow the CBOE VIX methodology and have become the investor fear gauge in the Europe, German and UK markets. Exhibit 1 shows that these indices are highly correlated. Since Jan. 2000, VSTOXX have been [...]
Although VIX spot is generally mean reverting, the S&P 500 VIX Futures indices are return generating time series that trend down for the majority of their history. This downward trend is particularly obvious in the Short Term index. This is because the price received from the sale of the shorter term contract is generally less than [...]
It has been widely observed that the S&P 500 VIX Short Term and Mid Term Futures indices track only a fraction of the VIX spot return. For example, on 8/8/2011, in response to the US Teasuries downgrade, the S&P 500 fell 6.88%, the biggest drop in 2011 (fingers crossed!). On the same day. VIX spot [...]
Reaping Roll Yield from a Quasi Volatility Neutral Strategy
On February 8th, I discussed the use of the inverse VIX ETP (XIV) to collect the roll yield from the VIX futures. When stocks fall and volatility rises, however, such a naked short position drops drastically. From 4/2 to 4/10, XIV dropped from 12.29 to 9.94, and lost 19% of its value (it’s now back [...]