Reading VIP tiers against last month’s volume
Public VIP tables describe a future you might not occupy yet—volume windows matter when you price a spread.
Fee schedules advertise VIP rates as if they were ambient. They are not. Most desks earn a tier from a trailing volume window. Pricing today’s arbitrage with next month’s hoped-for VIP is a common way to invent edge.
In reviews we pin three numbers: current tier, window end date, and the volume still required. Only the current tier enters the base case. Aspirational tiers belong in a separate scenario column labeled as such—never silently merged.
That discipline is dull. It also prevents a class of mistakes that look clever in a notebook and expensive on a settlement statement.