I always get confused when holiday scheduled change the standard trading hours. I logged into my account today and first everything looked good but then I noticed I lost another 6k since yesterday. Looks like a drop in the July Volatility index is the culprit. I'm long a VX future (in July) and while volatility is at record lows it looks like it dropped another 50% since yesterday. Usually I'd check this off as a bad print but the CBOE website, IB and ThinkOrswim all show the same quotes (TOS even has a tick candle there). I guess even when I'm not doing anything I'm still losing money right now. I tried to buy a future but my orders didn't go through. In this case I do actually "HOPE" that this isn't real but who knows, with all this fed manipulation, why not have volatility that low.
I still think this is a bad quote or a serious bug/issue somewhere else. It's not that volatility was @ 40 and dropped to 20 with a huge S&P run up, basically S&Ps were unchanged (down 2) and VX dropped by 50% from yesterday. Who would sell them this low when you couldn't even use UVXY or anything else to put on a hedge since those markets are closed.
I don't know much about VIX futures, don't think i have ever traded them, but from what i understand vix is the implied vol of SP500 options. Probably rather limited trading of them today (i know es was open for a period) so maybe some silly options quotes made the vix dive? i dunno.
Why is you main position to short the market. In a bull market, why not look for good opportunities to go long?
Good question. I think cause the downside risk is significantly higher than the upside potential but evidently it's not working out
Gamblingman, your description of your volatility plays reminds me of this author Bob Kudla. Have you heard of this guy before? http://www.amazon.com/Stock-Volatil...id=1404594405&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=bob+kulda In the past month I did take a long VX position just on sim to try it out. And wow, that thing acted so wierd, so I can kind of see what you mean where it almost looked like TOS didn't update it right or something for days. But overall it sounds like you've had tremendous success swing trading, something I'm still learning to try. Have you ever thought about short-term daytrading to mix things up? i.e. trading on a small time frame < 15 min especially on this "when is the Dow going to collapse", the "hated bull market" extending again month after month and year after year.
Haven't heard of this guy but the kindle price is 9 bucks and it has good ratings, sounds like a good idea to get it and read on the beach. Thanks for the tip. I do sometimes take day trades mostly in futures but not too much lately. I don't want to be glued to the monitor all day long. I like the first and last hour of trading, right now during the day nothing seems to move anyway. As far as individual stocks go, day trading them seems very demanding an I don't think I'm cut out for it. Looking at my results lately the same may be said for swing trades
I guess I'll get my 6k back It truly is a bad quote http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?t=285041&page=4