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Depends on whether or not the symbol is in the "penny pilot" program.

I've been saying that since 1350. A lot of good it's done me.

Try the "look inside" feature on Amazon. It's like going to B&N without leaving your couch!

You're correct in saying that margins can exceed max loss for long positions. The problem arises from margining these like a traditional future, where long and short positions are treated identically, instead of margining them like the replicating options portfolio they represent, where max loss...

Were you using Cost Plus?

Overnight price limits are also tighter (5%), so may help some sleep better.

At least the NYSE fees are coming down.

Seems you really hurt their feelings -- 100 up today :eek:

Retail customers seem to love negative roll yield, so I don't see why not. I think you'd have to get a lot more liquidity in the variance futures first, though. I'm guessing it would be easier to create an ETN based on an index derived from the listed var settles (similar to VXX and SPVIXSTR)...

Fair point. What units are the open interest in? The weird CBOE future quantity? It can't be notional vega since I remember seeing 200k August trade last Thursday.

Why collect premium when you can give options away for free?

Don't the quotes have a 1000x multiplier? I see the front month is 25k up (although further dated liquidity looks thin today). I think the VIX futures actually throw a curveball into the mix, as end users who don't look at VIX relative value might be confused why the strips are implying a...

I'm sure the dozen or so dealers that are active OTC will resist the move since they want to continue internalizing their customer flow, but if end users start bypassing them in favor of more transparent markets they may be forced to play in the space. As you mentioned previously, though...

My comment wasn't directed at you in particular, was just in general. Your container metaphor is a good start, but it's not a snapshot of implied vol that it gets filled with, but rather the actual close-close move in the index. It's possible for the market to move a decent amount and not...

SanDisk does not currently have any declared dividends.

Margins are 2-3x what they would be for a VIX future, but that's understandable given the much higher convexity in a variance swap as opposed to the more linear VIX future. I'm not sure that somehow simplifying it and making it more accessible to the average retail investor is necessarily a...

One thing to look into is CME's Velocity Logic. If the market drops too quickly (i.e. because someone took out the entire bid stack), the future will halt for a few seconds to allow people to enter orders and replenish liquidity. On the day of the flash crash, this pause marked the bottom of the...

Technically, it's possible the volatility term structure is in backwardation, or that the skew is so out of whack, to a point where the October will be over. In practice though, this virtually never happens.

Anyone else notice these have tightened up significantly in the last few days? Appears there are multiple people quoting now, although not for a ton of size.

Also, setting edge aside for a moment, the logistics of trading the box using European-style cash-settled options (SPX) will be much less complicated than trading it using the American-style physically-settled options on the ETF (SPY).