Vix spread trading strategies

It is therefore understandable that there is an increased interest in strategies which utilize the volatility premium. The easiest way to access this market is via liquid VIX futures contracts; however, there have not been a lot of academic research papers focused on this area.

Luckily one recent research paper has come up with a strategy exploiting the volatility premium via VIX futures with really promising results. Academic research states that volatility follows a mean reverting process, which implies that the basis reflects the risk-neutral expected path of volatility.

When the VIX futures curve is upward sloped in contango , the VIX is expected to rise because it is low relative to long-run levels, as reflected by higher VIX futures prices.

The Best VIX Strategy I’ve Found….But Still Don’t Quite Believe | wunesajoc.web.fc2.com

Likewise, when the VIX futures curve is inverted in backwardation , the VIX is expected to fall because it is above its long-run levels, as reflected by lower VIX futures prices. The investor sells buys the nearest VIX futures with at least 10 trading days to maturity when it is in contango backwardation with adaily roll greater than 0.

The daily roll is defined as the difference between the front VIX futures price and the VIX, divided by the number of business days until the VIX futures contract settles, and measures potential profits assuming that the basis declines linearly until settlement.

The VIX Futures Basis: Evidence and Trading Strategies http: This study demonstrates that the VIX futures basis does not have significant forecast power for the change in the VIX spot index from through but does have forecast power for subsequent VIX futures returns. The results indicate that these trading strategies are highly profitable and robust to transaction costs, out of sample hedge ratio forecasts and risk management rules.

Overall, the analysis supports the view that the VIX futures basis does not accurately reflect the mean-reverting properties of the VIX spot index but rather reflects a risk premium that can be harvested. The Expected Return of Fear http: Even though there is substantial risk that the VIX rises further during these turbulent market periods, however, subsequent average futures returns are close to zero or even positive, rather than more negative. This phenomenon is predictable using real-time data on the slope of the VIX futures curve.

VIX Calendar Spreads

Movements in price risk exposures and positions suggest that low demand for insurance from long investors drives this effect. A short futures investor who earns substantial returns during calm periods but otherwise pays out during VIX spikes can significantly reduce risk by moving into cash when the futures curve slopes downward with little detectable cost to expected returns, earning a 3.

VIX futures - Six Figure Investing

Risk Premia and the VIX Term Structure http: The shape of the VIX term structure conveys information about variance risk premia rather than expected changes in the VIX, a rejection of the expectations hypothesis. Slope's predictability is incremental to other proxies for the conditional variance risk premia, is economically significant, and can only partially be explained by observable risk measures.

Volatility Derivatives in Practice: Activity and Impact http: We use unique regulatory data to examine open positions and activity in both listed and OTC volatility derivatives. Gross vega notional outstanding for index variance swaps is over USD 2 billion, with dealers short vega in order to supply the long vega demand of asset managers.

To the extent that dealers take on risk when facilitating trades, we estimate that the long volatility bias of asset managers puts upward pressure on VIX futures prices. Hedge funds have offset this potential impact by actively taking a net short position in nearby contracts. VIX Futures Basis Trading: I developed in a previous working paper the Sidre and Most-Strategy.

The strategy relies on the typical termstructure of VIX futures.

The Calvados is a refined and condensed version of these strategies. The starting point was a paper of Simon and Campasano. The authors demonstrate that the VIX futures basis does not have significant forecast power for the change in the VIX spot index, but does have forecast power for subsequent VIX futures returns. It is especially profitable to short VIX futures contracts when the basis is in contango. The current working paper improves the original work in several points and extends the historic backtest.

The overall patterns of the original results are reassured and improved upon. The Calvados is traded in the Sybil-Fund. It is so far the pick of the bunch.

One gets a lot of fun for a medium dose of risk. The Sidre- and Most-Strategy http: This working-paper examines and improves a VIX-Futures calendar-spread strategy proposed in the literature.

The strategy relies on the typical term-structure of VIX-futures.

Additionally a naked short-selling strategy is considered. There is some risk, but also a lot of fun. The strategies are an interesting alternative investment-vehicle to boost the performance of a fund. Forecasting the VIX to Improve VIX-Derivatives Trading http: The overall result of this and the quoted papers is: The VIX is too a very limited extend R2 is typically 0. This paper confirms this finding if and only if the forecast horizon is limited to one day.

But there is no practical need to do so. One can - and usually does - hold a VIX Future or Option several trading days. It is shown that a simple model has a highly significant predictive power over a longer time horizon.

The forecasts improve realistic trading strategies. Log in Sign up. Notes to Confidence in anomaly's validity.