Pomeranets and Weaver reviewed market quality to answer the following questions: Is a Robin Hood tax effective at reducing volatility and speculative trading?
Simply watching the VIX has failed traders in recent years, and technical tools like Bollinger bands and Starc bands have proven to be more effective measures of volatility and risk.
While leveraged volatility ETNs do come closer to replicating the actual performance of VIX, these instruments are really only effective when held for short periods of time (as volatility lag eats away at the returns over time).