Vol is cheap for a reason. Even at 2, TVIX is probably a no play. IRs won't be raised to at least September, and imo, probably December. That means the stock market will simply go higher. There is something to be said for starting with a small position, and adding to it once a month until December. So say you can afford 500 shares of TVIX. Nothing wrong with adding in increments of say 30 to 50 shares at a time until you have full position on by December. This way, you aren't saying you know everything. But if you believe this levels aren't justified, you just that you believe that you don't know the exact timing of at least a 5% to 10% correction. If the correction is 20%, you almost always have a great chance to get in a large part of it. You will probably be starring at a losing position for months, and then one day, you will have a smile on your face. Another way to play it is simply to wait until you are on the right side of momentum. This is probably the preferred way that pros play it, since in the absence of a catalyst, what business do we have pretending we know what will happen six months in the future. The hard part is you will probably miss the first 4% of the move. On the other hand, you won't suffer for months either if the market grinds higher.
30 shares of a $2 stock? Does that include his fast food budget money or not? LOL. No, the pros will just buy bonds and get paid yield to hold downside protection instead of leveraging down into the abyss and hope to break even in 6 months.These are NOT the products to avg down into.
UVXY has options on the underlying, potentially making it an even better vehicle for the cash strapped retail trader. Keep in mind that it has many if not all the problems of TVIX. http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=UVXY+Interactive http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=UVXY+Options
Does VIX know something the rest of the market doesn't know? There's an odd disconnect between the fear index and the market http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/14/theres-an-odd-disconnect-between-the-fear-index-and-the-market.html
Is TVIX going to zero? LOL. I own some of it at levels which I thought was "cheap". It's certainly a lot cheaper now. Fortunately, it's only a small part of my total portfolio. But still scary watching it going down every day..