The Kiss of death for VXX: Reverse splits and artificial life support for ETFs

As expected, VXX is higher by about 4X today, or +300% (4X = 300%, all leveraged ETFs get this math wrong by the way when they say they are 200% leveraged. 200% is 3X).

Actually, VXX is +295% on pre-market, as the market is rising, and therefore, volatility is dropping.. The reason is that it underwent a reverse 1:4 split.

No doubt many investors will jump in joy when they their VXX jumped 300%.

However, reverse splits used to be the kiss of death for stocks. It simply means they have dropped to low that they need to resort to artificial means to stay live. Funds dropped them when they drop below $5 or so.

Lately, however, reverse splits are acting like artificial support for leveraged ETFs, who also tend to drop to zero over time. However, since leveraged ETFs do not represent anything real, they can keep doing reverse splits forever.

Or until investors vote with their feet. They can only milk the same cow for so long. We hope.

A reverse split for UNG is only a matter of time.