Models are useful. They help us understand the world around us and aid us in predicting what will happen next. But it’s important to remember that models don’t necessarily reflect the underlying reality of the thing we’re modeling. The Ptolemaic model of the solar system assumed the Earth was the center of everything but in spite of that spectacular error, it did a good job of …
The CBOE changed the way the VIX® was calculated on October 6th, 2014—asserting the change would provide a more accurate assessment of expected volatility. The new process does look better to me, but I’ve been surprised that the new VIX and the old VIX (listed as VIXMO) sometimes differ by as much as plus/minus 10 percent. Disagreements between the two indexes are not due to …
The volume of CBOE’s Weeklyssm options has grown rapidly since they expanded their listings into equities and Exchange Traded Products in June 2010. Now weekly options comprise almost 30% of the CBOE’s average daily option volume. The list of available weekly options is available on the CBOE website. Among other things, option traders take advantage of the Weeklys to position themselves for earnings releases, harvest rapid …
UPDATE Credit Suisse terminated XIV due to a greater than 80% drop in its indicative value on 5-Feb-2018. The final payout was $5.99 per share. The last day of trading was the 15th of February 2018. In the prospectuses for XIV, there are some disconcerting discussions about termination events. For XIV the termination event is triggered if the daily percentage drop exceeds 80%. I did …
Put a condor in place on S&P 500 April futures. The call spread was at S1350 (sell-to-0pen) and S1370 (buy), while the put spread was at S1140 (sell-to-open) and S1100(buy). The net credit on each set of four options before commissions was 6.15 points. With S&P 500 futures each point is worth $250, on the futures as well as the options on the futures. With …
