Opportunities Drying Up

For the futures trader, the opportunities are quickly disappearing.  Typical equity index behavior off a bottom.  Most of the gains off the bottom are made in the first 2 weeks.  The next 2 weeks of gains are much smaller and take longer, just because the volatility dies down so much and the desperate buyers have already covered shorts or returned to their normal long exposure.  

We had a golden time period for about a month and a half when you could take advantage of panicked trading to buy the dips and ride it up as the panic died out.  When there are no big dips, there will be no big rallies.

The VIX doesn't lie.  It is a good leading indicator of near term volatility.  VIX is below 15, something I don't think anyone could have imagined even last month, even if you knew that the market would go back up to SPX 2030.  The inverse of the VIX has outperformed the S&P by quite a lot during this rally.  That is a good sign for bulls, all else being equal.

But with a lower VIX, the upside will be limited, and the trading will be boring.