What jumps out is that VVIX in recent weeks and months is significantly up, even as VIX has stayed near its average. Why would this be? My honest answer is that I don’t know, but it could stem from the nature of the issues we are facing.
In many of the past crises, we have encountered challenges that were difficult to resolve but easy to define, in terms of timetable and influencing factors. An example would be the US government debt crisis of 2011. We were caught between two familiar political parties butting heads and creating uncertainty around the US national budget. Though we didn’t know the outcome at the time, the source of the uncertainty and the decision points that would determine what would happen in this crisis were widely known.
The challenges we are facing now are different. The drop in the oil price and the tensions between Russia and Ukraine are open ended – there is no known timetable for resolving these two issues – and they are much more complex in nature. The actions of many governments, companies, and individuals will determine how these crises evolve. To channel Donald Rumsfeld, all of this ambiguity creates worry about “unknown unknowns” and fear of fear itself.
This article was written by Reid Steadman, managing director, non-equity indices, S&P Dow Jones Indices.
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