It's a fantastic product that has treated me well. Why doesn't anyone give it any love? especially with more contango working in its favor in the recent months?
People should use this instead of XIV if they want to sell VIX futures and don't want to mess with the futures themselves, or VIX options. Significantly less risk, pretty much the same reward. Not a bad deal. Contango has come in a lot though recently. Still there but not real juicy like it was a little while ago.
Thanks for the tip! Looks safer than XIV. Now we just need some volume. Hm, somehow shorting VXZ doesn't work as well even though both are based on the same index.
No free lunch. This page says the average spread is 1.79%: https://www.jemstep.com/etfs/ZIV-VelShs-DlyInv-VIX-MT-ETN-ETF vs 0.09% for XIV: https://www.jemstep.com/etfs/XIV-VelShs-DlyInv-VIX-ST-ETN-ETF
If you are trading it daily, then yes, you will be screwed. Who gives a crap about the spread when there is a 3-5% monthly roll yield (tail wind) in your favor.
Not something to be traded daily, definitely. Simplistically you could sell it when VXV drops below VIX, indicating backwardation, which would be bad for this fund. But people need to research this stuff to use it properly.
You guys realize that people who've been making a killing in XIV/ZIV are just lucky that nothing "bad" has happened. It's like buying oil in early 2008. Sooner or later the VIX curve will flatten and you will have to trade, paying the spread each time. Plus, you'll get whipsawed a lot. It's been just too easy - that can't last forever. I did check the ZIV bid/ask spread intra-day today and it wasn't horrible (about 0.25%). I'll try trading it and compare vs shorting VXZ.