Buying another tranche of the VXX JAN 19 10s

Volatility is like fresh fruit, hard to warehouse.

From the article: “Chinese officials recommended to abandon or slow purchases of U.S. Treasurys.”

Look at the holdings by nation. The Japanese have almost as much as the Chinese.

Back in the 90’s, when the Japanese were the trade whipping boys, the same way the Chinese are now, this same thing happened. Actually it was PM Hashimoto came out and…[Read more]

Chris used to be on the research team at Tastytrade, where he had the reputation of being the expert on vol products.

I think the videos on his site are excellent.

So, my 11 year old comes in and looks at the screen and says,

“KODK? What’s that? And why are you putting that on in a pair with
SNAP?”

I went for a walk and thought about this more.

Both JCP and SHLD are already under tremendous pressure due to being
technically penny stocks under the $5 threshhold. I don’t believe
institutions can even own them any more, due to their being penny
stocks. So they must be unwinding their positions steadily.

Now, that there is a commissions war…[Read more]

Seth, I obviously have not set foot in a Penny’s store in years. But I saw a photo of utter degradation in a store in Manhattan. The store looked like a pigsty. Have they gotten their act together and cleaned up their operations. I know you are a guy who actually goes into the stores and looks around.

Yes, Michael is very generous with his expertise.

It’s very worthwhile to do a long march through his Twitter feed back to the beginning.

>>the Bank of Japan stop their bond buying, I believe in September and start to sell these bonds,

The BOJ will never stop and indeed cannot stop. If they stop buying the music stops. They have de facto nationalized their bond market. Their bond holdings will be kept in the vault, and eventually there will have to be a jubilee on all the…[Read more]

I am looking forward to scalping Vol products this year, for the first time.

Do you all use some indicator?

Is VWAP of any help?

The conventional wisdom would be the UVXY options are always overpriced, delta for delta, compared to VXX.

I can’t figure why you would trade the illiquid SVXY at all when you have one of the most liquid products in the world in VXX. Some days it’s THE most liquid.

The UVXY Jan 19 1 strike was down to .17 today so I decided to back up the truck and load up.

Meanwhile the VXX 10s were up. Go figure.

CMLviz is not working at the moment but when I ran the scan on UVXY the result was the same as for VXX, 50d30d held to expiry at 90 days was the best return. However, in terms of absolute returns VXX backtests were much better than UVXY. And I don’t think those returns account for the spread and slippage.

I am conflicted.

Although iPhoneX has got a lot of bad press — I am not sure how much of this is legitimate and how much is “man bites dog” or “if it bleeds it leads.”

Horace has a lot of insight, so when he gives heads up on something I pay attention. I have never seen him so enthusiastic about an Apple product.

Great quote from Horace Dediu on his iPhoneX impressions:

“Something is there, I don’t know what it is. It’s what they wanted to build from day one…I hate to say it’s magical but it is. There’s something going on but you can’t say what it is. I can tell you it is a quantum leap. It’s just like the first iPhone.”

IB’s policy on margining defined credit spreads is idiotic. These are not VIX calendar spreads, come on!

I suppose it’s that their software is too crude.

Have you found that the liquidity on those spreads has improved. I mean, it’s been a long time since I had to get out of one of em in a panic, but I recall that it can be tough with UVXY.

Longer duration is better for my mental capital.

It just turns out that 90 days is the best return on the backtester.

Well, it is certainly clear that German bund traders and also French VIX traders can move their respective markets in the US for at least short periods of time, if not on a sustained basis.

I don’t follow the V2TX but I do follow Nikei Vi and it looks like this year I am going to be scalping it intraday, since I discovered that Tradestation is…[Read more]