Kill me but How do I short Vol?

Nice visual. You know I'm an audio/video guy, and you stuck this image in my head, of him being in bed with any CEO. Jerk!

 

I'm confused. Is this jealousy? Did you want him for yourself?

(I'm joking. Don't go hiring any goons to whack me, 'K? )

 

Selling premium as in a short straddle.

 

Does anybody deal with VXZ?

Maybe better as a portfolio hedge long volatility than short, but I wondered about its structure as it is a new entry.

 

Short vol is more of a natural phenomena within investment vehicles.

Each tradeable instrument is either "short vol" or "long vol". Some instruments appreciate from being short volatility, others being long volatility.

For example, buy a call in AAPL. This is inherently long vol.

Now instead, short that call in AAPL, this is now a short vol play.

It goes much deeper but this is the gist.

 

Why would you ask that when you can simply look at the volume. There may be one guy in the world who trades it.

 

I wasn't concerned about volume yet but if it could work as hedge or if it was tricky like the VXX

 

The volume will tell you whether you want to be the 2nd guy in the world who trades if, and whether you may be able to sell it to the other guy when you need to get out.
Maybe try to trade some other stocks end ETFs with 0 volume to get the hang of it?

 

Btw, what’s tricky about VXX? It’s well established, traded in large volume, which also means you can actually find people who can discuss it, and its bugs have been worked out over the years. I’ve heard and seen some initial performance of TVIX and other like ETFs that was supposedly not in line with their own specs.
VXZ looks ok in theory, but how can you rely on it without knowing much about, and how do you find the only guy in the world who trades it to ask about his experience? What is even the mathematical chance that he is right here on this forum when you ask “Does anybody deal with (any stock that has no volume)” ?

 

I understand. I don't like vxx as a long, for long term for obvious reasons.
I am a tiny small 1 future or option contracts, or 100-200 share, trader so volume rarely concerns me, I should probably consider it better next time.

I noticed that the VXZ options were out of this world. I can not even directly trade USA ETF as I have a retail account from Europe and we are limited from trading etf (mifiid). We can get it assigned from an option tough.
As it's not easy to understand the structure volatility ETF as a retail trader I thought I ask here.
Next time I'll stick to Google search.