
On the opposite side, if the investor expects a volatility decrease, they can buy a put option. One way to play this is to buy a VIX call option if the investor thinks the market volatility will go up. Let’s suppose that an investor thinks the market is going to become more volatile. (And incidentally, the place where expert Trade Tactician Bryan Bottarelli used to work.) VIX options and futures are available through the CBOE, the same exchange that created the VIX volatility index. No matter which direction the market goes, you can make profits by trading the market swings. Investors can trade VIX volatility Index options and futures to directly trade the ups and downs of the market. The Rule of Thumb (usually): The VIX goes up when there’s turmoil in the market, and goes down when investors are quite content or at ease with the economic outlook. It reflects investors’ best predictions of near-term market volatility or risk. This VIX volatility index is an attempt to quantify fear in the marketplace. This represents higher implied volatility levels.

Therefore, when investors see options premiums increase, there’s the assumption that we can expect future volatility of the underlying stock index. If implied volatility is high, the premium on options will be high. The VIX concentrates on the price volatility of the options markets, not the volatility of the index itself. Implied volatility is the expected volatility of the underlying security. The VIX is a weighted mix of the prices for a blend of S&P 500 Index options, from which implied volatility is derived.

But most of us don’t know what it is, how it works or its relationship to volatility trading. Many investors use it as a market-timing indicator. The Chicago Board Options Exchange’s (CBOE) VIX, or the volatility index, is a term that’s been thrown around a lot lately. But, every investor needs to decide for themselves how much risk they are willing to take on in exchange for that potential to earn a return. In financial markets, the more risky a particular security, the higher return you have the potential to earn. The more the price of a security moves, the more likely it is that you will lose money on the stock as well. But a certain amount of risk is good for investors… after all, if you invested in a stock and the price never increased, you’d earn no profits from capital gains. The more the price of a security moves, the riskier it is. The more a price or index moves, the higher the volatility. Simply put, price volatility is the amount of change in the price of a security or market over a given time period. In this article, we will look at what volatility trading is and how you can use it to make money in the markets.

This movement can be in either direction: up or down. The higher the level of volatility, the more movement in the price. When we talk about volatility, we’re talking about the price movement of a stock or of a market. But volatility trading focuses on just what its name implies – volatility in the markets and in the price of a stock. Everyday trading tends to focus on the price of stocks.

Volatility trading is different from other types of trading, yet it can be a profitable form of playing the stock market for those interested in pursuing it.
