Just the kind of article I like to see regarding TVIX.

Check out this FUD job by Barron's entitled, "Volatility Traders Just Gave Back a Chunk of Their Their Gains".   The pump team hates to see anyone win on the short side.  It is really not their fault.  It is a mindset controlled by herd think.  Shorts are "those people" who "want to tear America down", blah blah blah.  Well I don't know about you but I think America is going to "go down" to a significant degree regardless of what I think and the reason is that people like the Barron's author don't want to acknowledge that a healthy market has true price discovery that includes up AND downs. 

After 5+ years of bull market where charts are essentially going straight up, the author of that joke of a story actually had the foolhardiness to say  that these funds are guaranteed to lose value over time.  Well no shit man.  Do you think that people playing these funds don't know that they are options based?  Why didn't you mention that those volatility ETFs which you scoff at are a good half way point between low earnings potential but high liquidity that you get with a straight short and high earnings potential with low liquidity (AKA large spread between bid and ask)?

We we should all be afraid of these funds, you know, because Brendan Conway says that we might have made a little coin last week but, darn it, we gave back a third of it today!  Unless, of course, you saw it coming and went to the sidelines for the day...  In all fairness, I did lose a very little bit playing JNUG in the meanwhile but that's because I got a sweet entry point that was very close to a trigger.  I guess we should be scared about playing JNUG too because it is also options based and it loses value over time as well.

Let's contrast that with regular old stocks and bonds which can never lose money, right Brendan?  I can already hear the crying of foul by people like this when the selling begins to pick up speed.  The fact that Chris Christie is running around NJ telling armed policemen that they are going to take a pension haircut means nothing to these talking heads.  It's only when bad stuff lands in their back yard that they take notice.  And when they do they are the loudest of the wailers, always asking the nanny state to step in and "do something" so that their idea of fair doesn't get upset.  I have seen the enemy, and he looks like Brendan Conway.