Trading Volatility : Trading strategies based on the VIX term structure.

Abstract: This study investigates how term structure dynamics of VIX futures can be exploited forabnormal returns. To be able to access volatility as a tradeable asset, the trading strategiesonly trades ETFs which are designed to replicate the movements of VIX futures index. Itis established that such ETFs are unsuitable for buy-and-hold investments because of thenegative roll yield it usually suffers, caused by the slope of the VIX term structure.Consequently, these conditions create opportunities for strategies that use direct andinverse VIX ETFs to be profitable. The study is a quantitative study that uses historicalprice data to back test three different trading strategies. The strategies are tested over theperiod 11-oct-2011 to 31-mar-2020. The authors have deliberately chosen to delimit thestudy by not testing the performance of the ETFs, not statistically test the risk-adjustedreturns and not perform a regression to calculate optimal hedge ratios for the strategies.The results from this study shows that its possible for strategies that exploit the termstructure dynamics of VIX futures to generate abnormal returns.