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VOLATILITY FOR MORTALS.

Volatility as an asset class is confusing to many investors.  v1Trader intends to change this.  We offer educational materials and a powerful volatility strategy as a subscription offering for investors ready to harvest volatility’s investment potential.

 

New to volatility?  Learn.

If you are relatively new to volatility investing and just want to learn a bit more, try our volatility primer, “Why Volatility?”.  It’s a complete first draft that covers what volatility is, how the VIX volatility index works, and how volatility can be traded with exchange traded products (particularly ETFs and ETNs). Uniquely, the paper ends with a (free) algorithmic volatility strategy that can be followed without need for specialized trading software nor even (in its simplest forms) need for a calculator.

In addition, we’re just starting our blog where we’ll post articles on current volatility trends, volatility strategies, links, and everything else we can find of interest to volatility investors.

Ready to rock volatility?  Subscribe.

v1Trader offers a very compelling volatility strategy called Battle Axe as a subscription service.   Battle Axe is currently on a tear, having gained +190% in calendar 2016, significantly better than buy-and-hold XIV which was itself no slouch (up 110%). Because Battle Axe trades only long positions with XIV and VXX, you can follow the strategy in an IRA or other tax-advantaged account.

Battle Axe is offered as a subscription through Collective2, where you can follow Battle Axe automatically or get the signals via email or other messaging.  We suggest getting an account at InteractiveBrokers (or other compatible broker) and letting Collective2 pass our broker-initiated trade signals to autotrade in your account, within moments of our own — you’ll trade the exact same trades we do in our own investment account.

What we do

Volatility investing is not simple to understand, which is why it hasn’t been widely adopted by retail investors.  Chances are unfortunately high that your personal broker or investment advisor does not understand volatility well enough to advise you on it.

Good coffee beans alone are not enough to make great coffee.  You need equipment and you need recipes and you need the discipline to get it right every time.  Volatility has the ingredients to be a fantastic long-term investment for a portion of your total portfolio, but you need know-how and a plan to get started.  That’s where v1Trader can help.  We understand volatility, and we’re working to be your premier source for learning about volatility trading.

Beyond learning, we’ve uncovered some really useful volatility trading tricks and are applying those in our proprietary strategy.  Not everybody has time to follow the markets on a daily basis and place the trades when they need to go in.  Our Battle Axe strategy helps with that… your trades are our trades.  When we place an order in our own investment account, the order is transmitted to the subscribing service (Collective2), and you can have your investment account set up to receive that same trade signal within moments of our having placed it.  Set it and forget it, if you choose.

 

Learn about volatility

MultiVol: preview of a new volatility strategy

MultiVol: A diversified approach to volatility trading MultiVol trades XIV and VXX with a backtested CAGR of ~90% and Sharpe ratio > 1.0. MultiVol stacks 12 different strategies to provide a diverse suite of volatility risk premium (VRP) signals with minimal optimization applied. MultiVol can be used as a standalone strategy for IRAs or other …

Why invest in volatility? And what is roll yield anyway?

Why invest in volatility? Why should volatility be considered an “asset class” in the same vein as equities, bonds and commodities? What makes it different? The short answer is: tailwinds.  The volatility funds have a unique driving force derived from the futures market that can propel volatility strategies in a way no equity fund could hope …

Battle Axe Strategy

Battle Axe is our extra-caffeinated, smooth-finishing volatility strategy offered via subscription at Collective2. Battle Axe is a switching strategy that is invested nearly every trading day in either short-vol XIV (an inverse volatility ETN) or long-vol VXX (a long volatility ETN). This is a quantitative, algorithmic approach that trades at a fairly low frequency: on average it trades 1-2 times per month, but may stay long XIV for months at a time in favorable market conditions.  The strategy has been live at C2 since early March 2017, but read the Battle Axe strategy detail page for full details and backtest results.