John Zechner CBOE Volatility Index VIX-I COMMENT Sep 09, 2019

It is a great hedge against the market dropping. But your precision on trading vehicles that have forward-based pricing (like futures contracts), means you have to be a rocket scientist to understand how volatility works in order to use them effectively.

It's another indicator that tells us about nervousness by sensing volatility. If you own the VIX, this is probably a really good time to sell. It's right at the peak that we saw last August.

It's a background thing, not a way to perfect timing. Tells you the neighbourhood you're in, but doesn't tell you what to do. You can look at these moves in terms of standard deviations, and how far away from the average we are. Moves of 2 or 3 don't sound big, but they're actually quite big in terms of deviation from the average.

Put this on your list. All the exchanges are trading well.

At his firm, they actually trade the underlying futures contracts as opposed to using the ETF. There are a number of ETFs to go net-long, go net-short, and to leverage on those plays. He can't recommend one, because he doesn't use them.

When you're using the leveraged ones, there's lots of potential adrenaline. They should only be used for very, very short-term views, days to weeks at the most. Never want to hold any leveraged ETFs beyond a few months because of the way they rebalance (buy high and sell low).