ASX VIX Futures Launched

ASX finally launched futures on its volatility index. As I understand the futures were listed yesterday (Monday) but there were no trades. Today (Tuesday) 1 contract traded. Not a great start, but you have to start somewhere ....

I am having a hard time accessing data for the contract. On Bloomberg, the index is SPAVIX  <INDEX> , but the ticker for the futures is AS51VIX <INDEX> . I tried checking the prices just few minutes ago, but there was no data for any of the futures contracts, as if they don't exist. Edit: the current contract is VIA <INDEX> .

Exchange's own website is not much of a help either - futures summary table does not have the data for the VIX contract (futures root VI). I was able to figure out this non-linked page with the data:

S&P/ASX 200 Volatility Index Futures

Expiry	Last	Bid	Ask	Volume
Spot	12.295
Nov 13		12.45	13.10	0
Dec 13	12.00	11.90	12.10	1

The volume in other international volatility contracts on Tuesday was:
RTSVX (Russian volatility index) - 2 contracts
VHSI (Hong-Kong volatility index) - 19 contracts
VNKY (Nikkei volatility index) - 71 contracts

Russian Volatility Index

It is official, yesterday RTS announced (eng, rus) that they will start disseminating the first "official" volatility index based on the Russian options market.

I blogged earlier about Russian VIX here, however at this time ОТКРЫТИЕ removed previous links to the construction of the volatility index, and I could not find any details on the RTS website. I assume that either way the exact methodology will feature two modifications to the VIX algorithm, namely parametric interpolation of the volatility skew to deal with relatively small liquidity in the market, and nonlinear weighting of the months, because expirations are sparse, and do not always bracket 30-day maturity.

RTS stated that they will start disseminating the index on Dec 7th. Bloomberg ticker for the index is RTSVX.