Stats › Volatility and VIX › VIX futures
VIX futures and term structure
The VIX is a measure of expected volatility, and you can't buy it. What you can buy is a futures contract that settles to whatever the VIX turns out to be on a given date. Line those contracts up by month and you get a curve, and the shape of that curve does more work than almost anyone realises.
Most of the time it slopes upward. Cboe's own research puts the curve in contango, which is the word for that upward slope, more than 80% of the time since 2010. On 31 July 2026 the VIX itself sat at 15.99 while the August contract settled at 18.10 and the April 2027 contract at 22.65. Every month further out costs more than the one before it.
That shape has a direct financial consequence, and it's the reason this page exists. Anything holding VIX futures has to roll from an expiring contract into a more expensive later one, month after month, and that roll is a cost. It's why long volatility products have such poor long run records, and it explains a lot of confusion about why a volatility product can fall while volatility rises. You'll also find here what an inverted curve means and what Cboe concluded about whether it predicts anything. Note the caution at the bottom: Cboe publishes two different curve series that don't agree, and I've explained which one is used and why.
The VIX futures curve has been in contango, meaning upward sloping, more than 80% of the time since 2010 according to Cboe's own research. On 31 July 2026 the curve ran from 18.10 for August to 22.65 for April 2027, a textbook contango, with VIX spot at 15.99. That persistent upward slope is why holding long volatility products loses money over time: each month the position rolls from a cheaper expiring contract into a more expensive later one.
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