It's official. The VIX just closed lower than the 2022 low, and way below the long-term average of 19.67 since its inception in 1990. It is still far from the historical low of 9.14 though.

Before you treat the VIX like a stock and think that now is a good buying opportunity, note that the VIX is not tradable. You can only trade VIX futures. An example would be the May contract which is currently priced at 19.55. This represents a premium of 18.8% from spot VIX. This means that spot VIX would have to increase by 18.8% for the trade to just break even. If VIX stays at the current level, you will lose close to 16% when the futures contract expires.

Those long volatility ETFs like VXX and UVXY also suffer from this decay because the issuer also uses futures to replicate the ETFs.

Volatility is an interesting asset class, and there's money to be made, but do not mistake it to be the same beast as stocks.

$Cboe Volatility Index(VIX)$ $Barclays iPath Series B S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures(VXX)$ $VIX Short-Term Futures 1.5X ETF(UVXY)$