Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Dismal VXX

As promised yesterday, here's the sad chronicle of VXX's steady decline and decay. Little more than a year in existence, this pitiful proxy for market volatility has fallen from 110 in April to 23+ yesterday, a staggering 79% drop. And it doesn't look like the fun's over yet.
The ATR8 has fallen from 6 in April to less than 1 today, a modest 83% drop. Reversing yesterdays' ATR/price ratio logic makes the situation appear a bit rosier but you can only put so much lipstick on a pig . . bottom line . . it's still a pig.
A little aside here... the 20 day beta of the VIX is -3.51, while the beta of he VXX is only -2.16, so a thinking man might expect the VIX to reflect a larger drawdown than the VXX. Not so.
I've tacked on the AROON indicator in the lower technical panel just for fun. This rather esoteric momentum signal needs to be "tuned" to reflect the beta of the study target and this is about the best we can do with VXX. Not a lot of BUY signals here and the door is wide open for further declines so thinking twice is the first caution here before getting bullish on the VXX.

1 comment:

iceminion said...

You're probably already aware of how VXX is structured, but the behavior of VXX vs. VIX is most likely a function of VXX having to roll forward their VIX futures contracts while the futures are in contango. UNG has been getting decimated for the same reason, though in slower fashion.

I guess the question here is how does this constant decline and contract rollover affect the various Project Z studies?