Dude, i like it. November has shown me how bad it wants to go down (i am currently long nov futures) and soon demand for november will slow down... On a lower vix it will have to plummet to 15's...u print a spot of high 14's that will smash through 16 sooner than later. I will admit its hard to see vols go to 20 with this bernake put in place, which makes vol trading even harder for me.
Over here we're short Nov. Thursday was a great day for that. Just has to stay below 18 to keep us happy. Looked at the atticus suggestion, it's pretty neat. Might try it in a small way on Monday morning. (I did a little study and figured out VIX goes up more than 70% of the time from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. So I'm thinking in general Monday mornings are the time to short this thing, if that's what you're wanting to do.) Also thinking long Dec on anticipation of the fiscal cliff; I could see hitting 20 before expiry because I would think people would want to be hedging that. Will probably stay out of Jan altogether given that's the month when they actually have to do something about it. I trust DC the way Lombardi trusted rookies: like a grenade with the pin pulled.
tre, the Fri-Mon open action on VIX is the marking of vol lower into the weekend. I didn't see it in index. Nov should actually come in twenty cents if the SPX opens flat. I expect a bit of a rally in SPX on Monday by the close. I think the trade could go to +30 on Monday, mae of perhaps 65-70 on the hold. Not interested in Oct/Nov into exp and Nov/Dec looks like sh*t here. Too late to hit the Oct/Nov/Dec fly (-1+2-1).
Like before, it's kind of impractical to sell a call naked. From what I can see, a good equivalent to your suggestion is selling the 17/23 call spread and buying the 17 put. Mid on that is .05 right now, on TOS.