We know that banks and hedge funds a traditional sellers of volatility. But low interest rates and somnambulant markets have also encouraged asset managers (or “tourists” as the banks and hedgies sometimes call them) to take up the strategy as they seek to juice their returns. It seems … risky.

This story has a lot of stuff in it, including a smallish dive into the events of October 15.

Long the domain of professional speculators like big banks and hedge funds, “selling volatility” — as such wagers are known — became one of the most popular trades of the year as a much wider range of investors piled into bets that asset prices would remain stable.

Now, as the prospect of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates draws increasingly near, the concern is that market volatility will return with a bang in 2015 and those investors caught on the wrong side of the revival will suffer badly.

“Volatility is a zero-sum game — for every buyer there is a seller. But what has changed is the type of sellers,” says Maneesh Deshpande at Barclays.

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Caught on the wrong side of the ‘vol’ trade