This article was originally published in The Option Strategist Newsletter Volume 9, No. 18 on September 28, 2000.
While the title may look like a typo, it’s what we want to talk about. In order to discuss the implied volatility of a particular entity – stock, index, or futures contract – we generally refer to the implied volatility of individual options or perhaps the composite implied volatility of the entire option series.
This article was originally featured in the 4/1/16 edition of The Option Strategist Newsletter.
It is worth noting that there has been a lot of discussion in the media about how cheap $VIX is, and these articles then have a bearish connotation for stocks. Two prominent articles appeared in the Striking Price column in Barron’s and on Zerohedge.com. The Zerohedge article covered a lot of interesting things about volatility futures and ETFs, but both of these articles mistakenly asserted that an upward-sloping term structure in the $VIX futures is bearish. I have seen the same opinion expressed many times on CNBC by traders who should know better, although I haven’t seen it there this week.
