Why do you want to get long vol at the highs? You know they are going to crush vol on a rally. This makes absolutely no sense to me.
Because vol-of-vol is not low, and if the markets rise say even to 1320, I expect that the demand for puts will still be high. Through Put Call Parity, the calls will also maintain primo. Since I am using relatively short dated options (Sep or Oct), that also helps. Any IV losses will be overwhelmed by delta gains, and as the option becomes more ITM, the vega will be less important. I am willing to pay some vega losses to contain the downside. When you are going for 100 handle gains, these things are just the cost of doing business. The key is to hold loses and risk as minimally as possible.
Unless we enter some bizarre zimbabwe style inflation (also requiring 30yr to crash) the chances of a 100 handle rally are effectively zero. BUT on the other hand, the onslaught of covered writers on any rally will crush vix/vxv.
[italics mine] Indeed! And an important observation. What i look for is the slope of the regression line on the equity curve, after costs, to be positive, and a standard deviation about the regression line ideally no larger than the magnitude of the slope. Positive slope required for profitability, low variance for consistency. "Edge" is directly proportional to slope and inversely to the standard deviation about the regression line, hence a quantitative measure of edge is: e = m/s.
L Oct 1270 Call at SPX 1273, Delta ~53 (depends on where you compute the forward to be). Stop loss 1259. Will add on a cross above 1292, and above 1300.
Quite interesting.... your post @10:22am CST has the volume in the Oct 1270 call zero. It's now 10:36am and its still zero... Hmm.... Paper trade?
Nitro, I'm trying to help here OK. You can trade how you want, but let me offer a suggestion. You are buying vol and it's getting crushed, even as the market is dropping. We are not going to get a 100 handle rally in the SPX. Maybe 30 to 40 handles and vol will get crushed. So what is the better trade? Sell the vol. It's actually working as the market is going lower! Selling index vol is a synthetic long directional bet anyway only with more edge then what you are doing. It's so funny, you are so smart with chess. Very multi-dimensional and able to understand complex strategy. Yet with your trading you are so one dimensional. I'm not sure how to explain that. Anyway, good luck with the trade.
Another interesting day for VIX given that SPX is nosediving: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^VIX+Interactive#symbol=^VIX;range=1d