macrocephalopod

One day I will be up here, although I did only learn a few weeks back that VIX options surprisingly also don't track spot VIX, so perhaps not.

Although it makes sense intuitively, because you can't really hedge and therefore rationally price the spot VIX.

All options should be options on futures, it would make everyone’s life easier.

They are, it's just that it's less of an issue for equities. E.g. use S=F * exp(-r*T) in BS and you get Black 76

Works until there’s a dividend or the stock is hard to borrow :(

the underlying is always the forward. rates and divs in bls is just one particular way of writing that down

Sure but I mean, for a lot of stuff you can’t actually trade the forward (either because there isn’t a matching expiry or because there just aren’t futures/forward full stop) so you have to trade spot and spend time thinking about “dividends” and “financing rates” ugh

Like, if I wanted to spend time thinking about rates and coupons and financing costs I would be a bond trader.