Spot-Up, Vol-Up And The VIX Squeeze Risk That Just Won’t Die
There's a "monster vibe shift" afoot across thematic macro trades, where last week's round of soft US price data triggered a reversal in bearish / hawkish rates expressions and an about-face in consensus long dollar positioning.
As discussed here, that shift's manifesting in the equity options space as flatter skew and put skew (i.e., less demand for downside protection) and steeper call skew (i.e., a bid for upside exposure).
The accompanying rally pushed the S&P back to a record on Wedne
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As a citizen investor, hedging via VIX options is difficult in that it requires so many contracts the fees act as a drag. On the other side, hedging with index puts is expensive if the timing is wrong and market can spot up, vol up for longer than you can hodl. So most of the time I don’t do much at all, which has served me well. That said my port did 140% during the Covid ‘dip.’ Thanks to a lot of cheap .08 delta puts at that time. Long vega, short delta… and good luck.