$VIX lovers/followers/haters/enthusiasts – this one’s for you. In this episode, we’re joined by a powerhouse group of volatility experts consisting of Kevin Davitt, Wayne Himelsein, Jason Buck, and Bastian Bolesta & Jeff Malec discussing Navigating Market Volatility. Providing more than just witty banter, you’ll to these guys talk about how crazy volatility was during March/April, […]
Category: VIX and Volatility

Tail Risk Hedging, Part IV
We’ve been talking about alternative investments that perform in a crisis for as long as we can remember. We typically refer to these as ‘long volatility’ type investments, that prefer and perform in periods of increasing market volatility. But we have also thrown around the terms crisis period performer (as opposed to absolute return performer). […]

The Principles of VIX Trading on The Derivative
The early world of VIX trading can be closely likened to the wild, wild West – or as some say – fun. Competition was lower, there were less algos and AI integration, and overall had lower volume and liquidity. And now – the VIX is an established and globally recognized gauge of U.S. equity market […]

Trading Chinese Futures Markets with Abingdon Global on The Derivative
The Chinese market is a sleeping/awakening/already awake dragon that cannot be ignored. Their futures market had the highest trade volumes in the world last year, the amount of liquid cash available in the country as a whole, and the opportunity of the emerging market (throwing back to circa 70/80s US market) with high volatility. And […]

Trading Commodity Volatility: A woman’s perspective on The Derivative
Trading commodity volatility is a unique topic all on its own, but add in hedge fund manager Kimberly Rios, and you’ve got what we calculated as a 1 in 10,000 manager; how’s that for unique? Kimberly heads up the Catalyst Hedged Futures Strategy Fund and trades in and out of different volatility regimes in the […]

So…Now What? Did I miss the Opportunity for Tail Risk Protection?
We’ve been telling anyone who would listen to properly diversify into something that actually does well in a market crash (like, here, and here, and here). Something with dynamic investment strategies that react to paradigm shifts and get on board with them. Things that do well in volatility spikes, but also when the spikes don’t […]

S&P Down, VIX Down – what gives?
If anyone doesn’t know yet based off this month, and VIXmageddon in 2018, and the 2008 financial crisis – the VIX, or fear index as it’s known to have been called from time to time, rises quite rapidly when the stock market falls. There are all sorts of reasons for this, but the primary one […]

Capturing the Global Sell-Off with Deep Field Capital on The Derivative
With seemingly insane bouts of market volatility making headlines for more than a month now, with this company and that strategy losing double digit percentages as markets continue to fall; our team has been fielding a ton of callings asking who’s been capturing a crazy market like this. We’ve also somehow found the time to […]

The BEST VIX/Volatility Follows on Twitter
It’s a crazy time…. like, VIX at highest levels since 2008 crazy… Who do you listen to about this spike? Who knows how out of whack the VIX curve is? What spreads look like… and what this all may mean for markets…. We’ve gathered up a list of top twitter follows for these crazy […]

How’s your (Alts) Portfolio Doing?
Last week was a great time to look in the (portfolio) mirror and ask yourself what you see. As Taylor Pearson of Mutiny put it succinctly on Twitter: If the stock market dropping 5% causes you to freak out, it’s probably a good time to re-evaluate either/both: 1. The effectiveness of your portfolio’s diversification 2. […]