Jun 26 – Yesterdays Vol Shock and the trades

Yesterday was interesting day, VIX spiked up 40-45% and we had some relative fear in the market.

My fresh HS3 trades all drew down as expected on any initial vol spike of that magnitude. Nothing at all to be concerned about and not all that big. My older HS3s were just fine. After an initial spike (VIX spiked to 19) there’s not all that much relative exposure to Vega left before the BS portions of the trade kick in. I mean there is a bit but relatively small and any more down move would trigger the OTM longs and the trade goes profitable. The trade is almost as perfect as it can get but what it needs is some initial vol spike hedging to keep Drawdowns and psychology clean. We have initial ideas.

The draw down is due to Vega and Vanna as the initial vol spike doesn’t quite affect the far away longs as much as the more upfront part of the trade. The far away longs would trigger in a bigger move down or a continued move down. Works well. The draw downs from an initial shock are moderate but I don’t lose sleep on it, standard (pre-market now, we’re already recovered most of the draw down). Basically, just stating that a 40% initial vol spike will generally cause your HS3s to draw down $500 or more.

Another 3% drop would activate those longs and BS protection kicks in and the trades would crush. This is the nature of the trade and the trade-off of the structure and well, it’s expected with ANY positive theta trade, at least initially. Rui mentions that he noticed in his backtest that the lower long put Vomma, Vanna, and Gamma power kicks in when the SPX gets close to the upper longs and the lower get into the 10 delta range.

Essentially, an initial shock and the time before panic is the temporary dead zone of these trades. Once those lowers have the greeks activated, then the trade profits.

Let’s call it VolFEAR and VolPANIC to distinguish the two types. An STT combo and an HS3 combo will initially draw down when we are in-between VOlFEAR stage and the VolPANIC stage and this is usually a relatively temporary period before either the market moves towards VolPanic or VolNORMAL stages.

Adding in a Krishnan PBR might be the answer to this and I am going to explore adding it in for low vol times for that initial shock (that you’d typically get in a 1.5-2.5% down day). This would cover the initial DD and maybe even profit and taken off while the initial structure would activate on a move further and is safe anyways.

The market is bouncing now and my pre-market balance is relative recovered. In backtesting, this was always the case and often after a larger fall and a few days of rest, the trades hit the profit tent and reach targets. Let’s see if this is the case for my older trades.

I managed to get on about 40 more units yesterday and I got 25 PDS @ 45 DTE to help with hedging on the bounce to 2721 at EOD.

I Like where we are right now.