Anyone else use VIX and IV to trade SPY?

I havent tested or backtested this yet but for the last few weeks, I've been paper trading SPY options and almost killing every move.

I'm exclusively comparing price action and levels to IV/VIX. I usually just use IV on SPY and haven't checked this against VIX but it seems like higher IV with SPY at the same level or lower means a rally could be coming. And whenever we go into a little range and IV goes down but SPY doesn't really make new highs, we dump.

Just looking for conversation on this.