Quote from RichardRimes:
Agree that it lags and is not a good prediction tool. However it does IMO confirm a general attitude in the market place. A 13 vix which changes only 20-30 cents in the face of a 10p12 pt drop is a complacent market . It suggests....not predicts....upward bias.
RR, respectfully you are so highly misreading things. The futures are 14.98 and 16.12..think about how that may swing the index. Furthermore you are suggesting that spx option traders know which way the market is going...so if they are not buying puts that means the market has blue skies...you also had a rebalancing today.
Anyway...can you explain how on the last vix peak shortly thereafter the market went up? Using your logic a 17 vix from 12 suggests otherwise. I don't have time to delve deeper but suffice to say, vix is simply a statistic on what emotional human traders are buying and they have zero predictive abilities.
. I trade the ES because I'm very familiar with it and use options because close is good enough.