The VIX Futures Volume Radar normalizes daily volume against its trailing annual baseline to identify equivalent sessions and project forward VIX spike probabilities.
1. Conceptual Hierarchy
Spot VIX is an un-tradable mathematical calculation derived from SPX option prices. Institutional market participants express views, hedge portfolios, or roll exposure directly through the front-month VIX futures contract (VX1).
The index is the calculation, the front-month future is the instrument, and volume is the activity in it. This tool reads the bottom level and asks what the index did next.
Spot VIX = 18.70: Indicates expected S&P 500 volatility over the next 30 days.
Heavy VX1 Volume: Indicates active institutional repositioning, such as hedge execution, short covering, or contract rolling, regardless of whether spot VIX is low or high.
2. Baseline System Inputs
The system evaluates the live session's front-month contract volume against its 1-year trailing baseline:
System Pair = ( VX1 Daily Volume , Trailing 252-Session Volume Average )Example baseline input: 78,251 contracts ÷ 96,138 trailing average
Because total market volume grows over multi-year cycles, raw contract counts cannot be directly compared across different eras. To normalize volume data across decades, the analyzer converts contract counts into a Volume Multiple and ranks it on a historical percentile scale.
1. Volume Multiple Calculation
Daily volume is normalized against the prior 252 trading sessions (1 trading year):
Example Execution: 78,251 / 96,138 = 0.81xSession volume ran at 81% of its trailing average
2. Full-History Percentile Ranking
The resulting multiple is ranked against all historical session multiples in the dataset:
Ranking the multiple rather than the raw count is what lets a 2013 session and a 2026 session sit in the same sample, even though the market traded very different absolute volumes in each.
3. Single-Variable Matching Protocol
Candidate historical matches must satisfy only one condition: matching the volume multiple percentile. Spot VIX is deliberately left unconstrained.
Only the left-hand condition selects the sample. The right-hand branch is drawn to show what the tool deliberately does not constrain.
Why Leave Spot VIX Unconstrained?
The Volume Multiple is already self-normalizing against its own historical baseline. Constraining spot VIX would strip out critical regime shifts that volume spikes are specifically designed to detect.
Chapter 3
Cumulative Intraday Spike Probabilities
The Spike Probability Engine measures how frequently VIX touched absolute point thresholds (measured from the entry session close) across three forward time frames: 5, 10, and 20 trading days.
1. Intraday Execution Logic (By Touch)
A historical path triggers a threshold breach the instant price reaches the target level at any point during the session, without needing to wait for the closing bell.
Upward Moves: Triggered if the session's intraday High reaches or crosses the upper target.
Downward Moves: Triggered if the session's intraday Low reaches or crosses the lower target.
This path hits the target early in the window and then closes lower than it started. The hit is what gets recorded, so the session still counts toward that level.
Key Rule
Once price hits the target intraday, it registers as a valid breach across all active evaluation windows (5, 10, or 20 days), even if VIX drops back down before the market closes.
The Setup Log provides an audit trail detailing every individual historical session that matched the volume percentile filter.
The Columns
Column Header
Definition
Analytical Value
Date
Historical trading session timestamp.
Shows path distribution across different market regimes.
VIX
Closing spot VIX on the match date.
Highlights the wide range of VIX regimes in the sample.
VX1 Volume
Front-month contracts traded in that session.
Displays raw session contract volume.
Volume Percentile
Full-history rank of that session's volume multiple.
Confirms percentile match to the active setup.
Highest VIX Move
Max intraday point expansion above entry across 5/10/20 sessions.
Supplies raw intraday metrics feeding probability calculations.
Interpretation Rules
"Never Went Higher": Recorded when VIX fails to trade above its entry closing price at any point during the designated window.
Pending Status: Identifies recent historical matches whose 5-, 10-, or 20-session forward windows have not yet fully elapsed.
Skew Evaluation: Comparing average peak moves against median peak moves reveals whether sample probabilities are driven by a few extreme tail events or broad systemic trends.
Example Skew Analysis
In this sample, the median peak 20-day move was +4.77 points, while the maximum peak move reached +53.36 points (from a July 2024 session). Sorting the 20-day column immediately isolates these extreme outlier events.