However, as you state, one has to be very careful to keep the potential exposure manageable - it would be a disaster to have to sell when the VIX is high! (In August 2015 wobble, I did close a VIXY short and replaced it with an equivalent SVXY long as it was getting rather large and a further increase in size would make me uncomfortable.)
Secondly, they are rather 'lumpy' - while VIXY/SVXY smoothly keep a 1-month average by combining the two futures, holding directly means it gets somewhat choppy when the time to expiry is short as it flails around all over the place.
Finally,the minimum bet amount is higher. I'm, shall we say, nearer the beginning of my wealth accumulation journey, so granularity matters - I like to ease into a position with small bets over a period days or even weeks. I can't do that at all with the futures.
All the above means SVXY is the most sensible for me for most of my position. The others at a bit of spice and in the case of VSTOXX, a slightly reduced correlation
It would be nice if IG would let me short futures further out, rather than just the next two, but they don't.
![Sad :-(](./images/smilies/icon_e_sad.gif)
If I could, I would also short VIXM.
Vix Central doesn't seem to do VSTOXX, and the structure is often more complicated, but once can use these sites to look at the values.
http://www.eurexchange.com/exchange-en/ ... urityDate=
https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes ... ll-futures
I also have a very small short position in ProShares Ultra DJ-UBS Natural Gas (BOIL) and ProShares Ultra DJ-UBS Crude Oil (ARCA), again because of the contango and the leveraged decay. I haven't a clue about the behaviour of oil & gas, apart from it is expensive to store, people on average seem to think it will be more expensive in the future & it fluctuates all over the place, so these are more of an experiment.
Thanks for the heads-up on the discount - though the futures roll over four times as much!
I like shorting.