The concept of computing implied volatility or an implied volatility index dates to the publication of the Black and Scholes' 1973 paper, "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," published in the Journal of Political Economy, which introduced the seminal Black–Scholes model for valuing options.17 Just as a bond's implied yield to maturity can be computed by equating a bond's market price to its valuation formula, an option-implied volatility of a financial or physical asset can be computed by equating the asset option's market price to its valuation formula.18 In the case of VIX, the option prices used are the S&P 500 index option prices.1920
The VIX takes as inputs the market prices of the call and put options on the S&P 500 index for near-term options with more than 23 days until expiration, next-term options with less than 37 days until expiration, and risk-free U.S. treasury bill interest rates. Options are ignored if their bid prices are zero or where their strike prices are outside the level where two consecutive bid prices are zero.21 The goal is to estimate the implied volatility of S&P 500 index options at an average expiration of 30 days.22
Given that it is possible to create a hedging position equivalent to a variance swap using only vanilla puts and calls (also called "static replication"),23 the VIX can also be seen as the square root of the implied volatility of a variance swap24 – and not that of a volatility swap, volatility being the square root of variance, or standard deviation.
The VIX is the square root of the risk-neutral expectation of the S&P 500 variance over the next 30 calendar days and is quoted as an annualized standard deviation.25
The VIX is calculated and disseminated in real-time by the Chicago Board Options Exchange. On March 26, 2004, trading in futures on the VIX began on CBOE Futures Exchange (CFE).26
On February 24, 2006, it became possible to trade options on the VIX.27 Several exchange-traded funds hold mixtures of VIX futures that attempt to enable stock-like trading in those futures. The correlation between these ETFs and the actual VIX index is very poor, especially when the VIX is moving.28
The VIX is the 30-day expected volatility of the SP500 index, more precisely the square root of a 30-day expected realized variance of the index. It is calculated as a weighted average of out-of-the-money call and put options on the S&P 500:
V I X = 2 e r τ τ ( ∫ 0 F P ( K ) K 2 d K + ∫ F ∞ C ( K ) K 2 d K ) {\displaystyle VIX={\sqrt {{\frac {2e^{r\,\!\tau }}{\tau }}\left(\int _{0}^{F}{\frac {P(K)}{K^{2}}}dK+\int _{F}^{\infty }{\frac {C(K)}{K^{2}}}dK\right)}}}
where τ {\displaystyle {\tau }} is the number of average days in a month (30 days), r {\displaystyle r} is the risk-free rate, F {\displaystyle F} is the 30-day forward price on the S&P 500, and P ( K ) {\displaystyle P(K)} and C ( K ) {\displaystyle C(K)} are prices for puts and calls with strike K {\displaystyle K} and 30 days to maturity.2930
The following is a timeline of key events in the history of the VIX Index:[according to whom?]
VIX is sometimes criticized as a prediction of future volatility. Instead it is described as a measure of the current price of index options.[according to whom?]
Critics claim that, despite a sophisticated formulation, the predictive power of most volatility forecasting models is similar to that of plain-vanilla measures, such as simple past volatility.484950 However, other works have countered that these critiques failed to correctly implement the more complicated models.51
Some practitioners and portfolio managers have questioned the depth of our understanding of the fundamental concept of volatility, itself. For example, Daniel Goldstein and Nassim Taleb famously titled one of their research articles, We Don't Quite Know What We are Talking About When We Talk About Volatility.52 Relatedly,[verification needed] Emanuel Derman has expressed disillusion with empirical models that are unsupported by theory.53 He argues that, while "theories are attempts to uncover the hidden principles underpinning the world around us... [we should remember that] models are metaphors—analogies that describe one thing relative to another."
Michael Harris, the trader, programmer, price pattern theorist, and author, has argued that VIX just tracks the inverse of price and has no predictive power.5455[better source needed]
According to some,[who?] VIX should have predictive power as long as the prices computed by the Black–Scholes equation are valid assumptions about the volatility predicted for the future lead time (the remaining time to maturity). Robert J. Shiller has argued that it would be circular reasoning to consider VIX to be proof of Black–Scholes, because they both express the same implied volatility, and has found that calculating VIX retrospectively in 1929 did not predict the surpassing volatility of the Great Depression—suggesting that in the case of anomalous conditions, VIX cannot even weakly predict future severe events.56
An academic study from the University of Texas at Austin and Ohio State University examined potential methods of VIX manipulation.57 On February 12, 2018, a letter was sent to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission by a law firm representing an anonymous whistleblower alleging manipulation of the VIX.58
In 2012, the CBOE introduced the "VVIX index" (also referred to as "vol of vol"), a measure of the VIX's expected volatility.59 VVIX is calculated using the same methodology as VIX, except the inputs are market prices for VIX options instead of stock market options.60
The VIX can be thought of as the velocity of investor fear. The VVIX measures how much the VIX changes and hence can be thought of as the acceleration of investor fear.61
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