re: Anyone else currently sitting on the sideline in the stock market?

Remainder of my VIX trade looks more and more likley that it will end up being worthless. Very grateful I closed enough of it to take a realized gain.

Now I'm really torn. Most of my logic in going to abour 25-30% cash was to realize gains, an uncomfortable feeling I have about "fake" earnings and my thoughts it was likely thta Hillary would be elected.

I'm seriously considering taking half of my cash and getting back in. So I'd still be about 14-20% cash. My thoughts are the tax cut. My issue is that it is very difficult for me to average up on current holdings. I'm not buying MMM @ $178 when my cost basis is well below $100. I'm not buying CVX at $118 when my cost basis is less than half of that.

I think what I'll proably end up doing is buy an index etf. Maybe VYM and & IWV. Also take a synthetic long on SLV out to Jan 2019. It looks like I can get a $12 strike for $16.65 on something that is trading at $15. 2019 would give me plenty of time to get out, and even if we had a correction my instinct is that an index fund would be o.k. in the very long term. There is a bit of tax planning invovled here as well.

Thoughts?

I've been doing a lot of research on the VIX lately. Not sure what the move is just yet but we are in contango and the VIX is near 5yr lows.

Through my research I have not seen anything about no real spot price. Interesting. I've been reading all over but tracking on vixcentral and reading articles on 6 figure investing. The spot price is on vixcentral and I also read somewhere that the futures price would be the average spread on the vix for whatever month you are looking at plus 10. But also that is given on vixcentral. I believe we are in Contango now and the vix/vxv is around .747, which from what I've read, is historically low.

I'm still researching and trying to pull all of this together before I make a move.

I am currently holding all of my stock positions as I'm 30years out from retiring and I mostly buy and hold long term growth dividend stocks.

I am sure there will be a pull back at some point in the near to mid term

I'm getting quotes on portfolio insurance today. It's relatively inexpensive this morning to go out to July 2017 VIX.

This seems prudent. If we have volatility or a correction I make an insurance claim and use the cash to buy something at a lower level. If nothing happens, essentially I've paid premium, and can show this as a trading loss in 2017.

Here is what I did today. SLV is trading generally at $16.00. I bought every January 2019 $9 call I could get below $7.75. So I basically have between today and January 2019 for silver to have opportunity to get over $16.75, although I'll likely make money if SLV is around $17.50. Seems like a easily manageable trade.

I bought various puts on regional property casualty insurers, all after they report Q2 results. Q2 would include the period of time they are most likely to suffer wind and hail catastrophic losses.

I bought July 2017 $15 VIX calls. I consider this the riskiest as I probably overpaid, but I wanted some sort of play on market volatility.

I'd consider all speculative, although the VIX also acts as insurance. The total trade was under $8K, and I set no stops. Maximum potential loss is total trade amount.

So I put a bit into some speculation today that won't require much time to manage the trade. I guess it's all a small downside hedge. We'll see how it goes.

10% unrealized gain on the silver trade.

VIX is about even, insurance play is about even.

Less than 30 day in the trade. I'll try to sell 1/2 of the SLV calls today to lock my profit.