Anyone ever trade these things? Or know of someone who does? I would love to run my quantitative strategy on these, but the volumes look anemic.
Why not use regular VIX futures? There is plenty of liquidity unless you have a serious axe to grind, spreads can be traded on stand-alone basis and there is a ton of stuff to do in the whole spx/vix vol complex.
when you only have $20,000 to start with, and you are doing longer term swing trades, you can only buy maybe 2 regular VIX futures at a time. my strategy needs to be able to purchase 25 with some room to spare before hitting the maintenance margin. Figured with $30,000 I could do it all with mini-VIX Futures.