| Move | Down this much or more | Up this much or more |
|---|
Chances of ending that far away. Passing that point along the way is roughly twice as likely. From a bell curve of returns: real markets crash more often than that.
VIX expected move calculator: turn the VIX into the S&P 500's likely daily, weekly, monthly and yearly moves, in percent, index points and dollars, with the chance of a 5%, 10% or 20% drop and how today's VIX compares with every close since 1990.
| Peak close | What happened | Market days to get back under 20 |
|---|
Historical VIX data: a chart of every daily VIX close since 1990, the VIX on any date, how rare a level is, the long-run average and median, record highs and lows, and the biggest volatility spikes from the 2008 financial crisis to COVID-19.
Implied volatility calculator: find the IV of a call or put from its price, or price an option from its volatility, with delta, gamma, theta, vega and rho, the chance it expires in the money, its break-even, and the move the market expects by expiry.
| Strike | Option | Price used | ΔK | Share |
|---|
VIX calculation, step by step: compute a VIX-style 30-day implied volatility index from any option chain with the Cboe method, including the forward price, K₀, the zero-bid rule, each strike's contribution and the 30-day interpolation.
| Fund | Tracks | Month | Year |
|---|
Before fees. Leveraged and short funds also lose from daily rebalancing when the VIX swings, so real results are usually worse.
VIX futures contango calculator: see whether the VIX futures curve is in contango or backwardation and estimate the monthly roll cost that erodes VIX ETFs and ETNs like VXX, VIXY and UVXY, or helps short-volatility funds like SVXY.
| VIX | Mood | Typical day | Share of days |
|---|
| VIX | Day | Week | Month | Year |
|---|
Divide the VIX by 16 for a day: a year has about 252 trading days, and √252 is 15.9.
| Index | Measures |
|---|---|
| VIX1D | S&P 500, the next day |
| VIX9D | S&P 500, the next 9 days |
| VIX3M | S&P 500, the next 3 months |
| VIX6M | S&P 500, the next 6 months |
| VIX1Y | S&P 500, the next year |
| VVIX | The VIX itself: how much it's expected to swing |
| VXN | Nasdaq-100 |
| RVX | Russell 2000 small caps |
| VXD | Dow Jones Industrial Average |
| OVX | Crude oil, from options on the USO fund |
| GVZ | Gold, from options on the GLD fund |
| MOVE | US Treasury bonds (ICE) |
| VSTOXX | Euro Stoxx 50 (STOXX) |
Cboe's Volatility Index. It uses the prices of S&P 500 options to measure how much traders expect the index to swing over the next 30 days, stated as a yearly percentage. A VIX of 20 means options are priced for moves of about ±20% over a year, or ±5.8% over a month, 2 times in 3.
Since 1990 the VIX has closed at 17.6 on a typical day (the median), and averaged 19.4. Below 12 is unusually calm, above 30 signals fear, and closes above 40 have only happened in crises.
Because it usually jumps when stocks fall. Investors rush to buy put options for protection, which raises option prices and the VIX with them. It rarely spikes when stocks rise.
No. The VIX measures how big moves are expected to be, not which way they'll go. High readings usually come after a drop has already happened, and the VIX tends to fall back as markets calm down.
Cboe takes S&P 500 options from the two expirations on either side of 30 days, uses every out-of-the-money put and call with a bid and an ask, weights each price by one over its strike squared, and blends the two expirations into a constant 30 days. The VIX formula tab does the same calculation on any quotes you paste.
Divide the VIX by 16 to get the S&P 500's typical daily move in percent, one it stays within about 2 days in 3. It works because a year has about 252 trading days, and the square root of 252 is 15.9, close to 16. A VIX of 16 means moves of about 1% a day.
Not directly. You can trade VIX futures and options, or funds and notes such as VXX, VIXY and UVXY that track VIX futures. Those usually lose value over time, because the futures cost more than the VIX and drift down to it. The Futures & ETFs tab shows how much.
The highest close was 82.69 on March 16, 2020, during the COVID-19 crash. The highest reading during a day was 89.53 on October 24, 2008, in the financial crisis. The lowest close was 9.14 on November 3, 2017.
They're what option prices imply, using a bell curve of returns. Most of the time the VIX is higher than the volatility that follows, because investors pay extra for protection. But crashes happen more often than a bell curve predicts.
Daily closing values published by Cboe, from January 2, 1990. When you're online, the page checks a public copy of Cboe's data on GitHub for newer closes. It can be a few days behind, so type today's VIX to use it. The calculations run in your browser. None of this is investment advice.
VIX® and the other Cboe index names are trademarks of Cboe Exchange, Inc. This site isn't affiliated with Cboe.
Learn what the VIX volatility index measures, what VIX levels mean, how the VIX is calculated from S&P 500 options, the rule of 16, why VIX ETFs lose value, and the other Cboe volatility indexes like VIX9D, VIX3M, VVIX and VXN.