Just fyi, if you want to trade vix butterflys you can call the CFE and they will add them for you. I sometimes trade them this way, but they don't fill against the calendar spreads. Only for catching crazy moves really.
They will add an exchange traded butterfly. +1 G -2 H +1 J that you can trade just like the other calendar spreads. Depending on your broker you might or might not be able to see it. Not sure if IB customers can access it. IB for some reason doesn't support many very active and interesting exchange traded spreads. So then it might take a call to them too - which could possibly go nowhere. Most exchanges if you call them are pretty friendly and will add stuff for you. The CFE in particular is actively exploring ways to increase volume. Again, the flys are not the most useful thing most of the day. Just useful for end of day madness.
I also feel compelled to point out that while lots of people might do market making on VIX futures, there is no official market maker anymore. They got rid of the market maker a year or so ago. Which is a good thing because they were getting preferential fill treatment. For many other CFE products Barclays is the market making and is getting a profit sharing agreement.
They will add an exchange traded butterfly. +1 G -2 H +1 J Depending on your broker you might not be able to see/trade it.
Interesting. So you're saying that there will be a book on the futures butterfly itself? I have been trading VIX futures time spreads as spreads for awhile, but never realized that they had butterflies as well. How would you input the symbols to pull up this market? Currently to get the time spread I simply type in VXG12-VXH12
They don't exist now because I haven't requested them for a while - and I typically only request the front month. After rechecking with IB again (I just found out they don't even show market depth on spreads!) I doubt they support butterflys. But they would show up in this section of TT.
IB does show market depth on spreads as they are native on the CFE unlike flies. What you are seeing in TT is their synthetic 3 leg combo derived from the spreads not the native CFE fly.
Sorry, rallymode, I must disagree. To create the butterfly you do nothing with TT. The procedure is to call the helpdesk at the CFE and the CFE creates it as an exchange traded product. THEN it will show up in TT and it shows up in my direct connection to the CFE through both the CMI and FIX interface. They used to automatically create the flys but since many brokers do not access them now they only create them when I call. To create synthetic TT spreads is an entirely different process (you don't call the exchange).