SVXY is the other side of the volatility trade: it targets -0.5x the daily move of short-term VIX futures, so it gains when volatility subsides. The half-leverage is deliberate. SVXY was a -1x fund until February 2018, when a single-day volatility spike destroyed most of its value overnight; ProShares reduced the exposure afterwards.
ProShares Short VIX Short-Term Futures ETF (SVXY) is currently trading at $61.30. Over the past 52 weeks, SVXY has traded between a low of $43.29 and a high of $61.79. Recent daily volume is around 1.6M. These figures update live as the market moves.
Being short VIX futures means the contango that punishes UVXY works in SVXY's favour — it collects the roll rather than paying it. That produces a slow, persistent upward grind in calm markets. The risk is entirely asymmetric: months of steady gains can be erased in a single session, which is precisely what happened in 2018 to the funds that carried full inverse exposure.
On 5 February 2018 the VIX more than doubled in a day. Inverse volatility products lost the overwhelming majority of their value in hours, and one competitor closed entirely. SVXY survived at reduced leverage. Anyone trading it should understand that its return profile is many small gains against rare, enormous losses — the shape that looks safest right up until it isn't.
Post-event calm: the sessions after a Fed decision passes without surprise, or after an earnings scare resolves. Volatility mean-reverts faster than price does, so SVXY often performs best in the quiet days following a scare rather than during a sustained rally.