Were you worried about 50 cent?

Credit : Matt Levine, Bloomberg

An annoyingly pervasive story over the past year or so of low volatility has been that someone has been buying a lot of out-of-the-money call options on the CBOE Volatility Index that would pay off if the VIX spiked. This someone would usually buy the calls that traded at a price of around 50 cents, leading to the buyer being nicknamed "50 Cent," and many rap lyrics were awkwardly repurposed to discuss these VIX option trades. The story was always the same though: Vol was low, the options didn't pay off, and Mr. Cent seems to have been down about $200 million since 2017.

Well now he gon' ... party ... like ... it's ... his ... I will stop, I am sorry, but here:

But as volatility rose last week, and stock markets fell, the strategy paid off. According to Pravit Chintawongvanich, head of derivatives strategy at Macro Risk Advisors, 50 cent held a net profit of $200m on the trade as of February 9.

“That means they’ve made about $400 million mark-to-market this month,” said Mr Chintawongvanich.