Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Taking Advantage of Recent Lows in the Volatility Index

With the VIX sinking there is nobody better to guide us through a trade on the VIX then todays contributor, COT staffer J.W. Jones.....

One of the newest option products to appear in our universe as an options trader is the option series designed to trade the volatility index (VIX). The VIX is a measurement of the implied volatility of the S&P 500 index.

To review quickly, the implied volatility of an options series is reflective of the aggregate market opinion of the future volatility of a given underlying asset. In terms of the Volatility Index, the price is the current market opinion of the future volatility in the S&P 500 Index over the next 12 months.

As are all attempts to predict the future, this value does not always reflect accurately the actual volatility as it plays out prospectively, but at a practical level it is the best we can do. As sage philosophers have long noted, “the future isn’t what it used to be.”

The importance for traders is the well established and generally known inverse correlation between prices for the given underlying and the measure of implied volatility, in this case our VIX value. What is typically less known is the fact that levels of implied volatility correlate even more closely to the velocity of the price move of the underlying asset in question.......Read J.W.'s entire article and check out the charts



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