Thanks for the question Chris. I personally don't have any kind of in house vol filter, although I can see that it might be useful. I could have used such a thing a few weeks ago to turn off some ES strategies. I'm not sure off hand how many of my personal strategies use volatility measures, but a fair percentage, with different types of calculations for it. The strategy development process I use could definitely incorporate such a measure, if one wanted it. Is that something you do? It sounds intriguing...
I’ve found that pnl spikes over multi year tick data testing, that any signal generated has a tendency for a much higher reward when volatility is the highest. I’ve looked through various systems developed, and overlayed the Vix chart. I was amazed at how much they correlated. I didn’t have a break through in system development till I developed a tick data volatility filter. The rewards seem to correlate with filtering only the signals generated during certain time intervals. All the above is just for the /ES. Chris
Thanks for sharing. I have noticed that holds in many futures markets (higher vol >> more profit). I have played around with creating vol type "indexes" for other markets, although I never really found something I liked enough to use. Perhaps it is time for me to re-examine that... Thanks for bringing this up - it is a good topic!
This may help, you only need to develop it for the /ES. Extreme volatility in equities spills over to most other macro markets.