You cannot exercise them, so it does not matter if that was your plan or not. What you are missing is that European options are not priced the same as American options. You must understand that difference. American options cannot trade under parity. If they did, people would buy them and then sell the underlying, locking in a profit. But European options can trade at any price. If VIX is 60, there is no reason why the VIX 50 call cannot trade at $2. And the truth is it does just that. All the time. Your calculator doesn't get it. The option does not have to trade with an IV of 90. It can trade with an IV of 10. It can ignore the VIX index because the VIX index is NOT THE UNDERLYING ASSET. The Underlying asset is the VIX futures. That means no one cares what the current price of the VIX index is. All that matters is the price of the futures contract - and that depends on what the VIX is expected to be when the option expires. In other words - in the future. If you need proof, go back to when VIX hit 80 and just look at the price of the VIX options - especially the out months. Mark
Yep, I get it. See subsequent discussion. The VT index is what I need to be looking at, even better than the VIX. But I don't want to make a directional bet on the VT (which is what the future gives me), I just want insurance in case of a spike.
I should just learn how to use the CBOE search engine. It sounds like this is what I want: http://www.cboe.com/Products/indexopts/ruh_spec.aspx Unless someone wants to edumacate me even more...
Not many folks interested in this topic? Unfortunately, CBOE has killed off RUH... temporarily or permanently, unclear as of yet. I'm guessing that with the huge spike in volatility in Sept/Oct of last year, whoever was going to make a market and sell these things realized they couldn't. So... back to where I was before. How do I effectively hedge against realized volatility?