(ETN) High Anxiety

When you see a bad deal in the stock market, there’s usually a way to take the other side of that trade and reap the rewards the other party gives up. With the markets stumbling this year and fear running high, many investors are looking for a way to profit from the anxiety. After all, it’s always nice to own something that spikes higher while other investments are falling. The market’s most well-known “fear gauge” is the CBOE Volatility Index, a.k.a. the VIX. When fear hits the stock market, the VIX surges. But because the VIX is an index, it’s not directly tradable. There’s a way to trade the VIX in the futures market, but it has a big drawback. Futures contracts have expiration dates. The contracts with nearer expiration […]