Ha ha ha...I never had the privilege to directly interact with an geniar$e like you! Continue to play out all of your BS, I am thoroughly enjoying!
Nobody is advocating for trading the synthetic... unless microstructure dictates. It’s critical to understanding the product. Here’s an example for you. Suppose the bid on the XYZ 400/500/700 asym put fly is 60x70 because of the deep 700P. The market is wide because the inter-exchange COB is automated and the 700P is $8 wide. You can replicate the deep 500/700 long put spread via an equivalent 500/700 short call spread which is say, $3 wide. The improved microstructure on the synthetic results in a savings of $500 due to microstructure.
I urge you to kindly converge back to the OP's query How to trade volatility? and to the purpose of this thread. Please refrain from writing stray stuff in order to prove how knowledgeable you all are. Thank you! Simple and precise! I entered this thread after reading your below post and wanted to ask you a question but was hijacked by some BS. <<Use volatility to your advantage when selling>> My question is not from the perspective of contemplating VIX or its derivatives, but to gauge IV% w.r.t. its Percentile or Rank or compare it to the underlying's Hist. Vol.%. Is that the best that a retailer can do in order to perceive volatility?
Then maybe you should STFU? You derailed the the thread with this embarrassment: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/how-to-trade-volatility.325291/page-6#post-4736812 Cool story, Bro, but wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.
VIX cash is at 12.12%. November VIX cash (fwd/synthetic) is priced at 15.20%. ATM Nov SPX vola is at 9.5% (no quotes at the moment). Nov will converge to cash, but obv it will not approach current ATM vol bc of the strip (wing-vol/valuation). So what do you trade? Selectively on the upside using bull VIX positions or attempt to capture the limited convergence (300) to VIX cash? Assuming that VIX remains low and ATM vols sit under 10? Trade long vol; long VIX. Don't attempt to short vol via VIX here.
Point that finger at yourself. The thread was going fine until you started to show-off from https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/how-to-trade-volatility.325291/page-3#post-4734280 and then https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/how-to-trade-volatility.325291/page-3#post-4734295.