Story about volatility products

Buy and Sell Volatility.
It is no coincidence that new investment products appear in sync with some market going one way or the other.

The new thing is: investing in volatility, or call what it is, bets on volatility.

Previously this sort of speculation have been for the people at banks and investment firms. Now Joe America can also get into this game. There are new products where you can earn and loose money based on the volatility of the market. You earn money if the market swings up and down a lot.

It is nothing new, the fear index, VIX, has been around for a while, but it has been difficult to buy and sell it.

The latest hot thing, not hot for long
What one should notice is that it is no coincidence the timing these new products starts to get marketed. In 2003 it was all of the sudden, a lot of new products that would make money on market decline, such as shorting funds, various hedge funds. Also sold was safe funds that guaranteed you could not loose more than a given percentage, but at the cost of the upside being limited.

What happened, this was the bottom of the market, the big bull came, and all of these new things did incredibly poorly.