Exploit VIX Percentile Threshold Rule Out-of-Sample?

Is the ability of the VIX percentile threshold rule described in “Using VIX and Investor Sentiment to Explain Stock Market Returns” to explain future stock market excess return in-sample readily exploitable out-of-sample? To investigate, we test a strategy (VIX Percentile Strategy) that each month holds SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) or 3-month U.S. Treasury bills (T-bills) according to whether a recent end-of-month level of the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is above or below a specified inception-to-date (not full sample) percentage threshold. To test sensitivities of the strategy to settings for its two main features, we consider:

• Each of 70th, 75th, 80th, 85th or 90th percentiles as the VIX threshold for switching between T-bills and SPY.
• Each of 0, 1, 2 or 3 skip months between VIX measurement and strategy response.

We focus on compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and maximum drawdown (MaxDD) as essential performance metrics and use buy-and-hold SPY as a benchmark. We do not quantify frictions due to switching between SPY and T-bills for the VIX Percentile Strategy. Using end-of-month VIX levels since January 1990 and dividend-adjusted SPY prices and T-bill yields since January 1993 (SPY inception), all through May 2023, we find that: (more…)