The $VIX is a curious creature to analyze, since it is such a different beast than most other kinds of charts. To get some fresh perspective, let’s look at some cruder granularities of this sentiment measurement.
First, let’s look at it from a quarterly perspective going back a third of a century. As you can see, the spike we enjoyed in volatility is very prominent, being the third-highest peak in this entire data set. The “Liberation Day” excitement (which feels like, oh, about 70 years ago at this point) was all too brief, but now the VIX is once again at an extraordinarily dull mid-teens level where it typically slumbers.
Like an early 80s Eddie Murphy show, let’s get even cruder and look at the year bars instead. The “body’ of 2025’s candlestick is much smaller than any of the others, illustrating how we’ve actually landed even lower on the VIX right now than when 2025 began, in spite of an exponential increase in uncertainty. Naturally, the yearly peak sticks out (3rd place, of course) as much as it did before.
On the more common daily chart, I’ve tinted the zone where we’re at right now, which is at a 16-handle. The only good news for the bears (and God knows they need some) is that there’s very little juice left to squeeze out of this lemon. Even with all the complacency sloshing around, I don’t think it’s likely we’re going to see a sub-teen VIX, or frankly even a sub-15 VIX, at this point. The next two weeks will be very telling in that respect.
