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**I hope bulls will wake up from this madness. --HiThere
July 15 (Bloomberg) -- The VIX rose with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, a sign from the options market that the biggest three-day rally for stocks since March is poised to end.
The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, as the VIX is known, gained 3.5 percent to 25.89. The S&P 500 added 3 percent, giving it a 6.1 percent gain since July 10. They have both advanced 25 times since the subprime crisis began in August 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The next day, the S&P 500 fell 18 times for an average loss of 1.6 percent.
“That is remarkable,” Randy Frederick, head of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas, said of the tandem move by the S&P 500 and VIX today. “The VIX is expecting something here, either a pull back this afternoon or tomorrow.”
Both indexes rose on July 6. The next day, the S&P 500 retreated 2 percent. The volatility benchmark, known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge” because it almost always increases as stocks fall, reflects expectations for price swings for the next 30 days. Higher levels signal more risk in equities.
The government’s weekly report on jobless claims tomorrow may be spurring concern among investors, Frederick said. The U.S. unemployment rate has increased to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent. Consumer confidence unexpectedly declined this month, according to a Reuters/University of Michigan index on July 10.
“We’ve had some unexpected numbers recently,” he said. “There is probably an anticipation that could happen again.”
On June 29, the VIX returned to its level from just before the September collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., as signs the economy is improving helped calm concern spurred by the worst recession in 51 years.
The VIX dropped to 25.35, putting it below the Sept. 12 close of 25.66. Lehman, once the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm, filed for the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Sept. 15, prompting a freeze in credit markets. The VIX surged 24 percent to 31.70 that day and peaked at 80.86 in November. |
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