A DIY, low-carry-cost implementation of a volatility hedge designed to fit into a buy-and-hold portfolio.
Buy investing 30% in an inverse, short-term VIX futures ETF, the strategy is capturing positive returns most of the time to help reduce drawdowns over time. The front-month futures contracts tend to be the most richly priced, so offer the larger yield to short.
The other 70% is invested in a long, mid-term VIX futures ETF. The mid-term futures are less expensive to carry, but also have a lower sensitivity to increases in volatility, requiring a larger allocation to offset the short-volatility characteristics of the 30% position.
The portfolio is rebalanced monthly, which tends to unlock a rebalancing premium over time due to the highly uncorrelated nature of the two ETFs. The result is a return that tends to be flat most periods, followed by periods of sudden positive convexity since the net position is long volatility. Additionally, as volatility increases, the short VIX position becomes a smaller weight until it is rebalanced–giving the long volatility position more impact. Contrarily, in a period of falling volatility, the short-volatility position will begin to dominate in allocation, causing the decay of the long-volatility position to become less impactful until rebalancing.