Condor Options

Some volatility-related items of note, ranging from the obvious to the esoteric, in that order.

1. On Friday, the VIX closed at 31.16, its highest level since April 2003. Today, it spiked up to 35.60, which does not exceed the highs from January 22, 2008 or August 16, 2007 – but remember that the VIX is just an index calculated from SPX options prices, it’s not a tradable entity in its own right, and it’s really being asked to bear too much of a predictive burden these days. Sure, this spike may be short-term tradable, but by itself VIX 35 may or may not mean much of anything: remember that this index spent most of 2002 in the 30-50 range.

2. Bill Luby has some fascinating notes on the relationship between panic, the VIX, and 3-month and 10-year Treasury yields. In short: buy when the VIX spikes relative to T-bill yields.

3. At right is the print from the VIX:VXV ratio this morning. By the end of the day, that candle fell all the way below the 1.10 threshold. So today looks like another data point confirming that when the ratio between one-month and three-month volatility gets really stretched, you may have a tradable bounce on your hands. But VXV is still wet behind the ears, so this is all just speculative.

[tags] VIX, VXV, IRX, volatility, Treasury bills [/tags]