About this episode

The episode explores Chicago's evolution as a derivatives hub and features insights from Cboe's leaders on current market dynamics.

On this episode of The Derivative, Jeff Malec continues Chicago Month with a deep dive into the past, present, and future of derivatives and volatility at Cboe with two of its stars. First up, Cboe Global Head of Derivatives Rob Hocking traces Chicago’s rise as the world’s derivatives hub, from the Board of Trade’s agricultural hedging roots to SPX and VIX becoming the center of global risk transfer. Rob walks through life in the OEX and SPX pits, the culture of open outcry, the evolution from Hull and DRW to “the dark side” at the exchange, and how today’s liquidity, zero‑DTE flows, and concentrated market‑making still hold up under stress. He and Jeff dig into whether the derivative can ever outgrow the underlying, why S&P 500 remains the benchmark despite megacap concentration and global basis risk, and how Cboe balances the floor’s high‑touch block business with a mostly electronic market. Then Mandy Xu, Head of Derivatives Market Intelligence at Cboe, joins to break down the current volatility regime. She explains what VIX really measures (and why “fear gauge” is often wrong), how Cboe decomposes VIX into bullish vs bearish positioning, and why today’s record…

People in this episode

Host: Jeff Malec

Guests: Rob Hocking, Mandy Xu

Topics covered

• derivatives
• volatility
• Cboe
• Chicago's financial history
• market-making
• VIX analysis

Keywords

• derivatives
• volatility
• Cboe
• VIX
• SPX
• zero-DTE
• market-making
• option-income

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cboe, Cboe Global

Products: VIX, SPX, OEX, zero-DTE, option-income, buffered ETFs, AI-driven dispersion trade

Places: Chicago

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