The Extinction Level Event
Over the last year, we've seen a lot of changes in the volatility exchange-traded products (ETP) space. It all started on February 5, 2018, with a massive increase in volatility that ultimately proved to be an extinction-level event for the grand-daddy of short volatility ETFs -- XIV. Late that afternoon, volatility almost doubled, increasing about 95%, in fact. Given the way that inverse volatility funds like XIV compute their values, this resulted in a 95% loss for XIV. According to the XIV prospectus, following a loss of more than 80% in