VIX futures traders
VIX Futures Trading Journal
VX and VXM don't behave like a directional index or commodity contract -- they're built on the market's own expectation of future volatility, which means the price you're trading often doesn't move point-for-point with the VIX index number quoted on financial news. A journal built for a trending contract misses the exact things that matter here: term structure, mean reversion, and whether an edge only shows up during an active spike.
The contract math, in real dollars
VX moves $50 per tick (0.05) and $1,000 per full point. Mini VIX (VXM) is exactly a tenth of that -- $1 per tick, $100 per point. Fillbook logs every VX and VXM fill against its real point value, so P&L and R-multiple reflect the actual dollar risk taken, not a rounded guess.
The futures price and the headline VIX number aren't the same thing
VIX futures price in the expected level of volatility at their own expiration, not today's spot VIX print -- the gap between the two (the term structure) is real and often persistent. A trade that looks confusing next to "what VIX did today" usually makes more sense once you're looking at what the futures contract itself actually did.
Mean-reverting, not trending
Unlike a directional index or commodity contract, VX and VXM spend most of their time drifting back toward a longer-run level between spikes. That means the shape of a winning strategy's results -- win rate, streak length, what a normal R-multiple looks like -- is genuinely different from a trending instrument, and worth tracking on its own rather than averaged in with directional-futures stats.
Edges here are often regime-dependent
A lot of VX/VXM trading concentrates around scheduled macro events (CPI, FOMC) and unscheduled shocks, with long quiet stretches in between. Tagging trades by whether they were taken during an active spike or a quiet grind is what makes it possible to tell whether an edge is real or only works in one regime.
Frequently asked questions
VX ticks $0.05, worth $50 per contract ($1,000 per full point). Mini VIX (VXM) ticks $0.01, worth $1 per contract ($100 per point) -- one VXM is exactly a tenth of one VX.
VIX futures price in the expected level of volatility at their own future expiration date, not today's spot VIX reading -- that gap (the term structure) is a real, persistent feature of how volatility futures trade, not a data error.
Yes -- P&L, R-multiple, and position sizing are all calculated per contract using each contract's real point value, whether trades are imported via CSV or synced automatically from a supported platform.