Traders of VIX Also Trade.......

So this is Nicole Manske, never heard that name before today, but she's officially now the Erin Andrews of Nascar

Anyway, people who read this site .....also probably read VIX and More.

OptionsExpress runs an Amazon-like feature where they let you pop in a name, and they'll tell you what else "traders in XYZ" choose to trade. So Bill hit up VIX, and here's what he found.

Not surprisingly, VIX traders are aggressive risk takers. In aggregate, they appear to be hoarding gold (GLD) and short the double inverse ETFs for real estate (SRS) and the NASDAQ-100 index (QID). It’s just a guess about the direction of some holdings, but the other positions appear to fall squarely in the short finance and technology camp: SPY, WB, AAPL, YHOO, and NVDA. The one finding that I find somewhat surprising is the presence of the ProShares Ultrashort Oil & Gas ETF (DUG).

Maybe there's an arb there. Go long double short Real Estate and buy VIX puts.

If nothing else, that will keep you busy trying to figure out what exactly to root for.

OK, the actual point would be that players in the VIX do not appear to be the risk averse/hedge the portfolio type, rather ones on the more speculative side.

And forget any optimism I had a couple hours ago about volatility. Whatever statistical nudge up we get off today's decline is a bit misleading. If you forget about the thinly gap down, it's a very narrow range day so far. Just biding time waiting for the 3:30 Gasparino Scare/Blastoff?