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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

27 July - Finally, Some Realized Vol

Within the first hour of trading, the VIX is up 10%, the August and September futures are up between 4 and 5% and the S&P is down over 1.3%. I believe today's sharp spike is due to the complacency I observed on Monday and Tuesday (more so Monday as volatility futures had begun a sizable move yesterday). Such complacency is often followed by panic and this often causes the market to overreact.


























Although I've sold some VXX against my calls as VXX rose this morning and throughout yesterday, I still have half the calls with no offsetting position and am carrying quite a bit of positive delta. Now comes the hard bit - what should I do now?

I would normally be tempted to sell more VXX. However, given that such a move has occurred on Wednesday, I fear that if no deal is done, we'd see similar moves over the next two days. Thus, there may still be some upside in VXX and definitely a lot of downside in the S&P (as the rise in VXX has by far outpaced the decline in S&P).

With the way things are playing out, I believe it will take them at least the weekend to come to an agreement.

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