Quote from sf631:
Question for you VIX futures traders out there:
Right now (1pm ET on 1/13) I see spot VIX at 21.78 and January VIX futures (exp 1/17) at 23.45. That seems like a big gap considering that it's really just more than 2 trading days until expiry and I'm wondering if I may have missed something about the way VIX futures are settled.
Does this mean that the futures market is anticipating spot vix to rise by 140 bps in the next 2 days? Could very possibly happen (it's risen 130 bps since yesterday's close) but that's a pretty big required move just to break even on a January VIX future (VXF2)
Put another way, will the front month contract converge with the spot index between now and expiry or is there some offset? Is there a tendency for the future to converge to spot, or for spot to converge to future?
I'm sure there are plenty of valid justifications for bad things that could happen in the next 2 days to rattle the markets, but that's not my concern. I'm not making a discretionary call on the markets in the next two days, just on the mechanics of settlement for this futures contract