cdcaveman- Wouldn't this be extremely dangerous? Maybe I'm wrong but to me it looks like this spread would leave you short vol-of-vol since you're short two and long one. You're basically shorting the tails of the distribution.
no its not extremely dangerous at all... your selling a put on the vix when it's around 12 or 13.. and your buying a call spread out of the money... You can only lose so much selling a vix put.. vix will not go to zero...and the call spread is limited risk... a call spread is limited risk.. and short put on vix is IMO limited risk..
I don't think you really read what i was saying.. I'm not proposing to be short naked calls on the vix ... a call debit spread funded by a short put... this isn't an outrageously crazy strategy on vix... if vix goes to 11 and expires you could lose what you paid for the call spread, and buy back the short put at a dollar loss or so... nothing catastrophic...
It's not catastrophic, but you won't make much pnl because when the VIX rallies, the short call leg becomes worth A LOT more relative to the long call leg.
Right you don't profit from a increase in skew.... This trade isn't for real spikes in vix I would agree... I'd take this one as a bet vols will bump up a bit from a all time low... I would definitely want the upside on a reallly volatile event
just to look at the PNL over the last few moves in vix... here is the risk reversal , then followed by the put call combo