CVOL Begins Trading Today

Today the first non-Barclays volatility ETN began trading (CVOL), whose formal name is (and I am not making this up) “C-Tracks Exchange Traded Notes Based on the Performance of the Citi Volatility Index Total Return.” Fortunately, what I will be affectionately calling CVOL also has a formal short name of “C-Tracks ETN on CVOL” so that if anyone happens to ask you what CVOL stands for at a cocktail party, at least you can blurt out the answer in one breath.

Going forward, the big question is how CVOL and its 3-4 month VIX futures target maturity and 2x leverage component will perform relative to the Barclays competition: VXX and VXZ.

CVOL will need some more volume and liquidity before we can make some meaningful comparisons, but with 3900 shares traded today, at least some investors are already stepping up to the plate.

The links below provide some additional information about CVOL and attempt to locate it in the VIX ETN universe.

Related posts:

• Interesting New Leveraged Volatility ETN Coming from Citi
• The Evolving VIX ETN Landscape

Disclosure(s): short VXX at time of writing