Guest Columnist at The Striking Price for Barron’s: Why I Am Short Fear
Today I am a guest columnist for The Striking Price on behalf of Steven Sears at Barron’s, weighing in with Be Greedy While Others Are Fearful. The Barron’s article is a quick summary of some of the reasons I am short fear. Essentially, I am short...
Performance of VIX ETP Hedges in Current Selloff
It was only a week ago that I discussed the performance of 31 VIX and volatility-based exchange-traded products in VIX ETP Returns for Q1 2012 and barely a month ago that I examined in some detail the workings of two VIX ETPs, VQT and XVZ, in Dynamic V...
VIX ETP Returns for Q1 2012
Back in my consulting days, I convinced myself that there were rare instances when an ugly chart crammed full of data should take precedence over a clean and simple graphic that focused on the key takeaways. For my purposes at least, the graphic below,...
Options on UVXY and SVXY Open Up New VIX ETP Trading Approaches
Whether or not I find it useful to flog the wounded horse otherwise known as the VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short-Term ETN (TVIX), it seems as if investors and the media insist that the wild and crazy story of this +2x VIX futures ETN remain on the fr...
Options on UVXY and SVXY Open Up New VIX ETP Trading Approaches
Whether or not I find it useful to flog the wounded horse otherwise known as the VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short-Term ETN (TVIX), it seems as if investors and the media insist that the wild and crazy story of this +2x VIX futures ETN remain on the fr...
ETRACS Volatility ETPs
While the likes of TVIX and UVXY have become overnight sensations during the last few weeks, one group of VIX exchange-traded products (ETPs) that continues to toil in relative obscurity is the dozen ETRACS VIX ETN that UBS launched in September 2011. ...
ETRACS Volatility ETPs
While the likes of TVIX and UVXY have become overnight sensations during the last few weeks, one group of VIX exchange-traded products (ETPs) that continues to toil in relative obscurity is the dozen ETRACS VIX ETN that UBS launched in September 2011. ...
An Updated Field Guide to VIX ETPs
With the sudden success of TVIX, it seems as if the entire VIX exchange-traded product (ETP) space has a large number of new converts. Growing from just two products at the end of 2009 (VXX and VXZ) to 12 by the end of 2010 and 31 by the end of 2011, V...
Four Key Drivers of the Price of TVIX
TVIX (VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short-Term ETN) is the new rock star in the VIX exchange-traded product (ETP) space. Far from being a one-hit wonder, I predicted just two weeks after it was launched (toward the end of 2010) that “TVIX will hit a t...
Slaying the Natural Gas Contango Dragon
Yesterday’s post on Natural Gas, Contango and UNG appears to have generated a fair amount of interest across a broad base of readers, so for an encore I have decided to forego the typical collection of dazzling Liszt miniatures and skip directly to m...
Natural Gas, Contango and UNG
I have talked at length in this space about the contango and negative roll yield issues that plague VXX. Periodically these discussions trigger a question from a reader about the impact of contango on some of the other ETPs. Just to be clear, as far a...
