The only time you want to sell puts in the S&P's is when it is the scariest to sell them - when the VIX is 30+ and the market is crashing/correcting. During these periods, out-of-the money put implied volatilties skyrocket and trade at irrational/unreasonable levels - premiums trading much higher than actual realized volatility. Everyone and their mother is panicking to buy them, which is exactly when you want to sell them. You'll have some sleepless nights, but when the market bottoms out and retraces, you'll be able to buy them back at a massive discount, or just let them go out worthless.
i have found the vix is like mystical creatures, just that it's a useless a myth. someone show me a vix method of any type that can out perform another method using on index price data. any takers, wake up people and stop wasting time the vix has no edge at all.
Well the vix does have an edge because ViX options are based on futures which usually trade at Contango. Buying ViX puts has made money over the long term if you can stomach the drawdown. Ditto XIV and SVXY if you hedge with deep out of the money calls and keep cash holdings as well rolling each month to maintain sensible proportions. My Gist contains several Jupyter Notebooks with which all such strategies can be backtested. No a properly hedged portfolio will not shoot the lights out but it will keep you safe.
Is this James Cordier's new gig? All the pitches on the website sounds mighty similar to his book. Oh well, I say why not, give them a try. At least they are not touching my money and charging $69 commissions per trade. What's the worst that can happen? Let's be positive for Xmas and the new year!!!