by From Donald MacKenzie and the London Review of Books The VIX, or Volatility Index, is Wall Street’s fear gauge. I first started paying attention to it in the late 1990s. Back then, a level of around 20 seemed normal. If the index got to 30, that was an indication of serious market unease; over 40 signalled a crisis. The highest the VIX ever got was during the 1987 stockmarket crash, when it reached 150. In the 2008 global banking crisis, it peaked at just below 90. The US economy has gradually recovered from the banking crisis, and the newly legislated tax cuts will further boost corporate profitability. These effects, though, are now ‘priced in’: share prices have already risen to reflect them. Tax cuts aside, the political system remains largely paralysed. The Federal Reserve seems
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from Donald MacKenzie and the London Review of Books
The VIX, or Volatility Index, is Wall Street’s fear gauge. I first started paying attention to it in the late 1990s. Back then, a level of around 20 seemed normal. If the index got to 30, that was an indication of serious market unease; over 40 signalled a crisis. The highest the VIX ever got was during the 1987 stockmarket crash, when it reached 150. In the 2008 global banking crisis, it peaked at just below 90.
The US economy has gradually recovered from the banking crisis, and the newly legislated tax cuts will further boost corporate profitability. These effects, though, are now ‘priced in’: share prices have already risen to reflect them. Tax cuts aside, the political system remains largely paralysed. The Federal Reserve seems likely to continue raising interest rates, which usually isn’t good news for the price of shares, and is beginning the process of weaning markets off the flood of cheap money that has helped inflate share prices. The tax cuts will most likely increase the Federal deficit. Add in a president who is the very opposite of calm (and who is under FBI investigation), and you might expect the VIX to be approaching the sweaty-palmed 30s. It isn’t. As this issue of the LRB went to press, the VIX was 9.8. It has been low for many months, and shows no clear sign of increasing.
Donald Trump would no doubt attribute the low readings to investors’ confidence in his leadership. But I have my doubts. There is an alternative explanation. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is often taken to mean that whenever you measure something, you alter it. In the everyday world, you can usually set this aside: I don’t worry about the effect of the speedometer on how fast my car’s wheels turn or on how its engine runs. You can’t ignore it, though, in economic life. As Charles Goodhart argues, if a measurement device is widely used, it stops being a simple economic speedometer. In the financial markets, it becomes part of how traders think, and can then begin to affect how they act.