iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX)

[risk on]

Contrary to what more experienced Volatility curve enthusiasts have told me, charts do work , on VXX and ANY tradable security. The point is that VXX will rise and fall on perceived Volatility , for the most part. No one knows what that event of driver will be. But, looking at the long term chart on VXX we can see these events are certainly cyclical , leading to pops. In almost all cases over the past 6 years, VXX pops and drops. However , that was in a period of unprecedented market gains, and there were occasions where VXX had a lil pop , retrace, then a bigger pop. Those were caused by " ongoing events" , ie ( debt ceiling, Europe) . Now we have an ongoing event that is CLEARLY the driver of volatity right now, that event is UKRAINE. Couple that w a ten year chart on SPY that is ABSOLUTELY OVERBOUGHT, and the probablities for a nice pop after this recent retrace, are certainly higher than normal.

Wild card: Jackson hole and Yellin. That can go either way, but Ukraine could easily trump her.

I don't think it's any COINCIDENCE that she is scheduled to speak on the last trading day this week though. Very telling IMO