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

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Weekend Review of Volatility Indexes and ETPs
By: Russell Rhoads | December 23, 2017

The volatility index price action relative to the equity market price action was pretty interesting last week. The S&P 500 was higher, as were three of the four volatility indexes calculated using S&P 500 option pricing. VXST was lower, but that is very common before three day weekends due to the calculation methodology (calendar days) when we have the market closed for three days.



VVIX stays over 90 and moved up a bit last week and TYVIX moved nicely off closing at an all-time low on the previous Friday. The long funds suffered a bit despite VIX moving higher as a reminder that VXX is not VIX.



Usually the holiday season with the extra days off results in volatility indexes suffering a bit of a head wind. I was surprised to the point of double checking numbers before posting the table below as I would have expected more indexes lower than higher last week.



UVXY hasn’t had a very good 2017, which is being polite. At least one trader thinks UVXY will not be gaining any of the losses back next week. With 2 minutes left in the day and UVXY at 10.10 a trader sold 600 UVXY Dec 29th 10.00 Calls for 0.43 and then purchased 600 UVXY Dec 29th 12.50 Calls for 0.14 taking in a credit of 0.29.



Note in the payout diagram above, UVXY only needs to drop 0.10 or more. Considering that UVXY dropped 36 of the last 50 weeks and the average weekly performance being down over 4%, this trade makes some sense. Barring a year end volatility event things should work out as hoped for this trade.

http://www.cboe.com/blogs/options-hub/2017/12/23/weekend-review-of-volatility-indexes-and-etps---12-18-2017---12-22-2017

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