A lot has been written about the lead up and causes of last February’s ‘Volmageddon,’ including some popular and informative articles from the Invest In Vol team available here: XIV and SVXY - What Really Happened? and here: How Trading Volatility is Changing. But despite the relatively straightforward causes of February 5th, there has been very little discussion around improving the Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) that were used to access the vastly popular short volatility trade.
For those without the time to reread the detailed causes of last February’s ‘correction,’ a quick