Volatility moderately higher

With US indexes turning moderately lower into the afternoon, the VIX turned positive, and achieved its first daily gain in six trading days. The VIX settled +2.1% @ 13.37. Near term outlook offers a VIX in the 14s, before remaining low across much of April/early May.


VIX'60min

VIX'daily3

Summary

Little to add.

VIX remains low, and the big 20 threshold looks unlikely to be hit for at least 6-8 weeks.

It remains the case that the VIX spikes are just getting generally lower and lower, since the giant equity wave began Oct'2011.

The notion of the VIX 30s right now..looks almost inconceivable. After all, neither Syrian or Ukrainian 'issues' never rattled the market enough to break and hold the 20s for more than a day or so.
--
more later, on the indexes