As the year comes to an end, here come the lists of the best and worst-performing stocks, options, ETFs–you name it!
On Monday, ETF Trends singled out this year’s top performing funds to include ?the?Velocity Shares Daily Inverse VIX Short-Term ETN (NYSEArca:?XIV)?and the?ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (NYSEArca:?SVXY).?
To date through last, they increased more than 200% and in December, they hit all-time highs.?
With these two products, they move in the opposite direction of VIX futures. They enable investors to bet against volatility and in October, Barron’s Brendan Conway wrote XIV is “kind of backdoor bullish bet on the stock market.?
At the time of his writing, it was up 171%.?
Just as the inverse VIX ETFs have seen off the charts gains, it’s been a different story for the VIX. At one point it reached a high close to 50 with the deficit ceiling and Eurozone problems in 2011 and went back to its average of 16 recently.
Last week with fiscal cliffs concerns, it awoke from its slumber and reached 20 intraday before trading back around 19.?
With the clock loudly ticking, the VIX is back up to 20.61 (9.29%) on this last trading day.?