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. ...
All About UVXY
With the media feeding frenzy surrounding the VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short-Term ETN (TVIX) during the past week, a similar product, the ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (UVXY), has been largely overlooked. This is unfortunate, as UVXY ha...
Credit Suisse Suspends Creation Units in TVIX: What It Means
After today’s regular trading session, Credit Suisse (CS) announced in a brief press release that it has “temporarily suspended further issuances of the VelocityShares Daily 2x VIX Short-Term ETNs (TVIX) due to internal limits on the size of the ET...
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...
Monitoring VIX Futures and Their Impact on VIX ETPs
This morning was one of those mornings where stocks were up, the VIX was up and some of the VIX futures were up even more than the cash VIX – at least before the latest round of news from Greece hit. It is on days like these when my inbox invariably...
Implications of a Positively Correlated SPX and VIX
For those who missed today’s market action and just looked at the post-mortem reports, today probably looked like just another in a series of uneventful days. For those who were paying attention to the likes of the VIX futures and ETPs based on VIX f...
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...
VXX Celebrates Third Birthday
It does not seem too long ago that I was the only person who thought VXX was worth mentioning. Known formally as the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN, VXX was launched three years ago today, alongside of its sibling, the iPath S&P 500 ...
The VIX-VXX Minotaur Trade
[The following first appeared in the December 2010 edition of Expiring Monthly: The Option Traders Journal. I thought I would share it partly because I have an article, “Synthetic Seasonal VIX-VXX Arb,” which appears in the just published January 2...
