Volatility Views 130: Talking Volatility Skew

Volatility Review: What happened last week in vol?

• VIX cash: A decent range this week. Non-farms taking the remaining juice out of the market.
• VIX options: Top OI Positions: 351,982 VIX Nov-14 20 Calls, 339,931 VIX Oct-14 17 Calls, 317,207 VIX Oct-14 20 Calls.
• Big VIX Trades: Today (Friday) paper traded 457900 VIX Oct 19 calls for $.86 & paper traded 54,997 VIX Nov 23 calls at $.94.
• Gold vol: GVZ ticking up over the past few weeks - futures options still put heavy.
• Oil vol: Continued put love in crude as well.

Volatility Voicemail: Listener questions

• Question from Crazyhorse - Can some of the roll yield problems suffered by VXX and others be solved by either 1) rebalancing on a less frequent basis or 2) trading a basked of futures as opposed to simply buying the same long term contracts every time?
• Question from Chris Hanks, Toledo, OH - Hola volatility gang and perhaps special guest. I am a frequent listener and wanted to write in to say thanks for putting out this show every week. My Mondays suck but I get a nice little pickup on my commute when I download the latest episode of Volatility Views. I do miss Don's "sold to you" attitude, but I am sure you will get him back on one of these days. No one gets as fired up about selling vol as Don S. Let me leave you with this question: Long term, which do you think will outperform - dynamically hedged spy atm straddle or dynamically hedged VIX straddle? They should be roughly equivalent but clearly they are not.

Crystal Ball: Jared and Mark make mad prognostications.