Authored by Jared Dillian of The 10th Man,
Ten years ago, when I worked on the equity index derivatives desk at Lehman, we used to sit around and dream things up. Like, we wondered out loud if you could actually create a volatility ETF.
It seemed like a brilliant idea. Who wouldn’t want to buy volatility? There were some studies going around that said holding volatility as an asset class alongside a diversified portfolio could improve the portfolio’s risk characteristics.