In the recent month I found that the trend of VXX has deviated significantly from VIX futures. Both the September and October VIX futures have been in down trend since late July, while VXX stayed pretty much at the same level. Since VXX holdings are composed of near-term VIX futures that are in contango, I would expect VXX to be in a faster down trend due to the rolling loss. However, that is not the case. Why aren't arbitrageurs short VXX and long the futures? Am I missing something?
Yes, VXX stopped tracking VIX futures since Barclays announced that they've issued/created more VXX shares then they've been allowed, and had to stop any activity in them. VXX is now driven in part by speculation.
No wonder. Instruments like VXX must be very lucrative for Barclays. It depreciates the majority of the time and the redemption value is going to be a lot lower than the original value.
Instruments like VXX and UVXY and etc. are not supposed to track VIX futures. They are two different instruments. https://sixfigureinvesting.com/2013/04/how-does-vxx-work/ https://www.allquant.co/post/why-isn-t-vxx-tracking-the-vix-index