Who Is Trading TVIX?

As action in the TVIX heats up again today (up 15% on 21 million shares traded), I gave some thought to who might be trading what I called in this space over a year ago “day trading rocket fuel.”

Fortunately, we have the optionsXpress Trading Patterns feature to help answer this question.

In the graphic below, it appears that TVIX is part of the arsenal of those who favor the high volatility products that are ideally suited to short-term trades. These include the 3x leveraged ETPs (TNA and TZA), the 2x leveraged ETP for silver (AGQ) and a handful of futures products based on the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and crude oil. Two high flying stocks are also on the list, Renren (RENN) and BroadVision (BVSN) – the latter of which just happens to be the first or second internet stock I ever purchased, some 16 years ago.

It turns out I cannot type fast enough to keep up with market events. As I was typing this, there appeared to be another short squeeze in TVIX (see VXX Options Calm After Second Highest Volume Day Ever for details on the last one), though the markets seem to be settling back down once again.

Finally, a quick reminder that today is the last trading day for VIX February options. VIX February futures can be traded through tomorrow’s pre-market session, which runs from 8:00 – 9:15 a.m. ET. Both products settle with a special opening quotation (VIX SOQ) at the beginning of tomorrow’s regular trading session.

Related posts:

• Volatility Becomes Unhinged on Friday
• VXX Options Calm After Second Highest Volume Day Ever
• TVIX Finally Getting Its Due As Day Trading Rocket Fuel
• Who Trades the VIX and VXX?
• Optionsxpress Trading Patterns and the VIX

[source(s): optionsXpress.com]

Disclosure(s): short VXX and TVIX at time of writing

ProShares Rolls Out Commodity and Currency 2x and -2x ETFs

Just 12 days ago I came out with what I thought was a bold statement in Prediction: Direxion Triple ETFs Will Revolutionize Day Trading. I was going to do a follow-up to show how volume has skyrocketed in these ETFs, but Bespoke beat me to it in today’s 3x ETFs on Fire. Bespoke includes some excellent graphics that capture the extreme volatility in these ETFs as well as the snowballing volume trend.

Not to be outdone by Direxion, ProShares is now rushing to market a new group of 2x and -2x ETFs focused on commodities and currencies.

Personally, I continue to transition more and more of my trading from stocks to ETFs. I think the ETF trend is here to stay.

[source: ProShares]