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.