fear index

19 results back to index

Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster by Nick Timiraos

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bonfire of the Vanities, break the buck, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, fear index, financial innovation, financial intermediation, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, implied volatility, income inequality, inflation targeting, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, meme stock, money market fund, moral hazard, non-fungible token, oil shock, Phillips curve, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Rishi Sunak, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, secular stagnation, Skype, social distancing, subprime mortgage crisis, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, unorthodox policies, Y2K, yield curve

In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio: The Stories, Voices, and Key Insights of the Pioneers Who Shaped the Way We Invest by Andrew W. Lo, Stephen R. Foerster

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, backtesting, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, compound rate of return, corporate governance, COVID-19, credit crunch, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, equity premium, equity risk premium, estate planning, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fake news, family office, fear index, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, index fund, interest rate swap, Internet Archive, invention of the wheel, Isaac Newton, Jim Simons, John Bogle, John Meriwether, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, linear programming, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, managed futures, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, mental accounting, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Myron Scholes, new economy, New Journalism, Own Your Own Home, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, prediction markets, price stability, profit maximization, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, RAND corporation, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, selection bias, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, South Sea Bubble, stochastic process, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, tail risk, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, time value of money, transaction costs, transfer pricing, tulip mania, Vanguard fund, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

In fact, the CBOE has created an index based on this process: the Volatility Index (VIX), usually expressed in percentage of the standard deviation of returns. Historical levels of the VIX are depicted in figure 6.1.66 The VIX has also been called the Fear Index, as a gauge of investor fear: the more uncertain investors are about future stock market values, the higher the VIX. But to describe the VIX narrowly as the Fear Index does it a disservice. The VIX provides the markets with the socially useful function of an insurance mechanism. Through the VIX, not only can you speculate on volatility, but you can also insure yourself against adverse changes in volatility. Scholes recently noted, “Market pricing of options conveys much more information than [do] the spot markets.

Principles of Corporate Finance by Richard A. Brealey, Stewart C. Myers, Franklin Allen

3Com Palm IPO, accelerated depreciation, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbus A320, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, big-box store, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, Boeing 747, book value, break the buck, Brownian motion, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California energy crisis, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, collateralized debt obligation, compound rate of return, computerized trading, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-border payments, cross-subsidies, currency risk, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Dutch auction, equity premium, equity risk premium, eurozone crisis, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, frictionless, fudge factor, German hyperinflation, implied volatility, index fund, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interest rate swap, inventory management, Iridium satellite, James Webb Space Telescope, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Larry Ellison, law of one price, linear programming, Livingstone, I presume, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, market bubble, market friction, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, PalmPilot, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price discrimination, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QR code, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Real Time Gross Settlement, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Scaled Composites, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Skype, SpaceShipOne, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, sunk-cost fallacy, systematic bias, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, the rule of 72, time value of money, too big to fail, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, urban renewal, VA Linux, value at risk, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Factoring Arrangement whereby a financial institution buys a company’s accounts receivable and collects the debt. Fair price provision Appraisal rights. Fallen angel Junk bond that was formerly investment grade. FASB Financial Accounting Standards Board. FCIA Foreign Credit Insurance Association. FDIC Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Fear index VIX. Federal funds Non-interest-bearing deposits by banks at the Federal Reserve. Excess reserves are lent by banks to each other. Fedwire A wire transfer system for high-value payments operated by the Federal Reserve System (cf. CHIPS). Field warehouse Warehouse rented by a warehouse company on another firm’s premises (cf. public warehouse).

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black Swan Protection Protocol, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Bob Litterman, Boris Johnson, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, commodity super cycle, complexity theory, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, disinformation, diversification, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, effective altruism, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, energy transition, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Extinction Rebellion, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, Gail Bradbrook, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, index fund, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Joan Didion, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, moral hazard, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, panic early, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Singer: altruism, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, proprietary trading, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative easing, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rewilding, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, Sam Bankman-Fried, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systematic trading, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, value at risk, Vanguard fund, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

The New Trading for a Living: Psychology, Discipline, Trading Tools and Systems, Risk Control, Trade Management by Alexander Elder

additive manufacturing, Atul Gawande, backtesting, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, buy and hold, buy low sell high, Checklist Manifesto, computerized trading, deliberate practice, diversification, Elliott wave, endowment effect, fear index, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, offshore financial centre, paper trading, Ponzi scheme, price stability, psychological pricing, quantitative easing, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, risk tolerance, short selling, South Sea Bubble, systematic trading, systems thinking, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, transfer pricing, traveling salesman, tulip mania, zero-sum game

It is extra useful if you trade shipping industry stocks. NH-NL—I consider the New High–New Low Index the best leading indicator of the stock market and like to write down the latest weekly and daily figures every morning as a refresher. VIX—The volatility index, also called “the fear index.” There is a saying: “When VIX is high, it's safe to buy; when VIX is low, go slow.” A footnote: beware VIX ETFs, notorious for trading out of sync with the VIX index. S&P 500—I write down yesterday's closing price for the index and add the Impulse system initials for its weekly and daily charts. Daily value—I switch to the daily chart of the S&P and note whether its latest bar closed above, at, or below value and also its relation to the channel lines.

EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts by Ashoka Mody

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, availability heuristic, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, book scanning, book value, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, call centre, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, credit crunch, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear index, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, global macro, global supply chain, global value chain, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, income inequality, inflation targeting, Irish property bubble, Isaac Newton, job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land bank, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, loadsamoney, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, neoliberal agenda, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, pension reform, precautionary principle, premature optimization, price stability, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, short selling, Silicon Valley, subprime mortgage crisis, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, urban renewal, working-age population, Yogi Berra

(Indices of usage of phrases “great moderation” and “irrational exuberance” in books digitized by Google) Source: Google Books Ngram Viewer. concentrated in a few hidden pockets and that over time, financial markets would better serve the common good. As if to validate the great moderation narrative, during the course of 2004, the global “fear” index—​the VIX, a measure of future volatility of the US stock market—​fell steadily toward 15, well below its historical average of 20. Crucial to the benign “great moderation” view was the growing presence of “independent” central banks. Many economists and policymakers believed that central banks, now impressively insulated from self-​serving and shortsighted politicians, had the right incentives and tools to dampen harmful economic booms and prevent—​or at least moderate—​the busts.

How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say--And What It Really Means by John Lanchester

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, asset allocation, Basel III, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Swan, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, disintermediation, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, estate planning, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, forward guidance, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, high net worth, High speed trading, hindsight bias, hype cycle, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Perry Barlow, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kodak vs Instagram, Kondratiev cycle, Large Hadron Collider, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, loss aversion, low interest rates, margin call, McJob, means of production, microcredit, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, Nikolai Kondratiev, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, survivorship bias, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, working poor, yield curve

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises by Timothy F. Geithner

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, Atul Gawande, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, break the buck, Buckminster Fuller, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, David Brooks, Doomsday Book, eurozone crisis, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, implied volatility, Kickstarter, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, McMansion, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, negative equity, Northern Rock, obamacare, paradox of thrift, pets.com, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Saturday Night Live, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, selection bias, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, tail risk, The Great Moderation, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tobin tax, too big to fail, working poor

Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever by Robin Wigglesworth

Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Blitzscaling, Brownian motion, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, cloud computing, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, COVID-19, data science, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Henri Poincaré, index fund, industrial robot, invention of the wheel, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John Bogle, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, lockdown, Louis Bachelier, machine readable, money market fund, Myron Scholes, New Journalism, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, RAND corporation, random walk, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, rolodex, seminal paper, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, transaction costs, uptick rule, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund

The Devil's Derivatives: The Untold Story of the Slick Traders and Hapless Regulators Who Almost Blew Up Wall Street . . . And Are Ready to Do It Again by Nicholas Dunbar

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Black-Scholes formula, bonus culture, book value, break the buck, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, delayed gratification, diversification, Edmond Halley, facts on the ground, fear index, financial innovation, fixed income, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, implied volatility, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market bubble, money market fund, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, short selling, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, Thomas Bayes, time value of money, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, Vanguard fund, yield curve, zero-sum game

The original mathematics behind the Black-Scholes formula had gone through several generations of upgrades and refinements since 1973 and was gathering acolytes daily. According to Black-Scholes, the cost of manufacturing options increased with market volatility. Traders learned to use the option price as a kind of “fear gauge,” measuring what the market expected future volatility to be. (In 2005 the CBOE would adopt this fear gauge in the form of a new index called the VIX.) What started out as a valuation recipe for obscure contracts became a crucial tool for generating information that allowed traders to make risk management or investment decisions. It is hard to overemphasize the impact of this financial revolution. The neoclassical economic paradigm of equilibrium, efficiency, and rational expectations may have reeled under the weight of unrealistic assumptions and assaults of behavioral economics.

Systematic Trading: A Unique New Method for Designing Trading and Investing Systems by Robert Carver

asset allocation, automated trading system, backtesting, barriers to entry, Black Swan, buy and hold, cognitive bias, commodity trading advisor, Credit Default Swap, diversification, diversified portfolio, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Edward Thorp, Elliott wave, fear index, fixed income, global macro, implied volatility, index fund, interest rate swap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, merger arbitrage, Nick Leeson, paper trading, performance metric, proprietary trading, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Sharpe ratio, short selling, survivorship bias, systematic trading, technology bubble, transaction costs, Two Sigma, Y Combinator, yield curve

Rigged Money: Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game by Lee Munson

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, backtesting, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, call centre, Credit Default Swap, diversification, diversified portfolio, estate planning, fear index, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, follow your passion, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, High speed trading, housing crisis, index fund, joint-stock company, junk bonds, managed futures, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, National best bid and offer, off-the-grid, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, power law, price discovery process, proprietary trading, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Savings and loan crisis, short squeeze, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, too big to fail, trade route, Vanguard fund, walking around money

Handbook of Modeling High-Frequency Data in Finance by Frederi G. Viens, Maria C. Mariani, Ionut Florescu

algorithmic trading, asset allocation, automated trading system, backtesting, Bear Stearns, Black-Scholes formula, book value, Brownian motion, business process, buy and hold, continuous integration, corporate governance, discrete time, distributed generation, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, housing crisis, implied volatility, incomplete markets, linear programming, machine readable, mandelbrot fractal, market friction, market microstructure, martingale, Menlo Park, p-value, pattern recognition, performance metric, power law, principal–agent problem, random walk, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, short selling, statistical model, stochastic process, stochastic volatility, transaction costs, value at risk, volatility smile, Wiener process

Heads I Win, Tails I Win by Spencer Jakab

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, book value, business cycle, buy and hold, collapse of Lehman Brothers, correlation coefficient, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, diversification, dividend-yielding stocks, dogs of the Dow, Elliott wave, equity risk premium, estate planning, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, fear index, fixed income, geopolitical risk, government statistician, index fund, Isaac Newton, John Bogle, John Meriwether, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, money market fund, Myron Scholes, PalmPilot, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pets.com, price anchoring, proprietary trading, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, robo advisor, Savings and loan crisis, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, survivorship bias, technology bubble, transaction costs, two and twenty, VA Linux, Vanguard fund, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Clearly, then, sentiment can tell you a lot. As they say, though, talk is cheap. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a single number based on people who put their money where their mouths are? There is—sort of. The most famous of these is what journalists call the stock market’s “fear gauge.” It’s a misnomer, but the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, is an interesting and useful indicator of how much traders are willing to pay to sleep better at night. The VIX as we know it today was developed by a Vanderbilt University professor in 1992 and is based on a Nobel Prize–winning 1973 option pricing formula by Fischer Black and Myron Scholes that, through some complicated math, tells us how much stock volatility is expected over the next thirty days.

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader by Colin Lancaster

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset-backed security, beat the dealer, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, Carmen Reinhart, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, family office, fear index, fiat currency, fixed income, Flash crash, George Floyd, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, index arbitrage, inverted yield curve, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, National Debt Clock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, oil shock, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, social distancing, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, The Great Moderation, TikTok, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, value at risk, Vision Fund, WeWork, yield curve, zero-sum game

The Fear Index by Robert Harris

algorithmic trading, backtesting, banking crisis, dark matter, family office, fear index, Fellow of the Royal Society, fixed income, Flash crash, God and Mammon, high net worth, implied volatility, Jim Simons, Large Hadron Collider, mutually assured destruction, National best bid and offer, Neil Kinnock, Renaissance Technologies, speech recognition, two and twenty

If you want the math, it’s calculated as the square root of the par variance swap rate for a thirty-day term, quoted as an annualised variance. If you don’t want the math, let’s just say that what it does is show the implied volatility of the market for the coming month. It goes up and down minute by minute. The higher the index, the greater the uncertainty in the market, so traders call it “the fear index”. And it’s liquid itself, of course – there are VIX options and futures available to trade, and we trade them. ‘So the VIX was our starting point. It’s given us a whole bunch of useful data going back to 1993, which we can pair with the new behavioural indices we’ve compiled, as well as bringing in our existing methodology.

The Investopedia Guide to Wall Speak: The Terms You Need to Know to Talk Like Cramer, Think Like Soros, and Buy Like Buffett by Jack (edited By) Guinan

Albert Einstein, asset allocation, asset-backed security, book value, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, computerized markets, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, dogs of the Dow, equity premium, equity risk premium, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, implied volatility, index fund, intangible asset, interest rate swap, inventory management, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, margin call, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, passive investing, performance metric, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, statistical model, time value of money, transaction costs, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

VIX is the ticker symbol for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Volatility Index, which numerically expresses the market’s expectation of 30-day volatility; it is constructed by using the implied volatilities of a wide range of S&P 500 Index options. The results are meant to be forward-looking and are calculated by using both call and put options The VIX is a widely used measure of market risk and often is referred to as the investor fear gauge. There are three variations of the volatility indexes: (1) the VIX, which tracks the S&P 500, (2) the VXN, which tracks the Nasdaq 100, and (3) the VXD, which tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Investopedia explains VIX (CBOE Volatility Index) The first VIX Index was introduced by the CBOE in 1993 and was a weighted measure of the implied volatility of eight S&P 100 at-themoney put and call options.

The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning, Revised and Updated by Gautam Baid

Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, backtesting, barriers to entry, beat the dealer, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, book value, business process, buy and hold, Cal Newport, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commoditize, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, do what you love, Dunning–Kruger effect, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Everything should be made as simple as possible, fear index, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, follow your passion, framing effect, George Santayana, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, Henry Singleton, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, index fund, intangible asset, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Masayoshi Son, mental accounting, Milgram experiment, moral hazard, Nate Silver, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive income, passive investing, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, power law, price anchoring, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, six sigma, software as a service, software is eating the world, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, stocks for the long run, subscription business, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, tail risk, Teledyne, the market place, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, time value of money, transaction costs, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, wealth creators, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse by Mohamed A. El-Erian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, break the buck, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, collapse of Lehman Brothers, corporate governance, currency peg, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, friendly fire, full employment, future of work, geopolitical risk, Hyman Minsky, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, income inequality, inflation targeting, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, liquidity trap, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Norman Mailer, oil shale / tar sands, price stability, principal–agent problem, quantitative easing, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, yield curve, zero-sum game

Red-Blooded Risk: The Secret History of Wall Street by Aaron Brown, Eric Kim

Abraham Wald, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Asian financial crisis, Atul Gawande, backtesting, Basel III, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, book value, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, carbon tax, central bank independence, Checklist Manifesto, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, disintermediation, distributed generation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental subject, fail fast, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, global macro, illegal immigration, implied volatility, independent contractor, index fund, John Bogle, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, market clearing, market fundamentalism, market microstructure, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, open economy, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, pre–internet, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, special drawing rights, statistical arbitrage, stochastic volatility, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, tail risk, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thomas Bayes, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, yield curve

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy by Adam Tooze

2021 United States Capitol attack, air freight, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blue-collar work, Bob Geldof, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, floating exchange rates, friendly fire, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, junk bonds, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, oil shale / tar sands, Overton Window, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, Potemkin village, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, QR code, quantitative easing, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social distancing, South China Sea, special drawing rights, stock buybacks, tail risk, TikTok, too big to fail, TSMC, universal basic income, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, yield curve

Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story by Greg Smith

Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, Black Swan, bonus culture, break the buck, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, delayed gratification, East Village, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, high net worth, information asymmetry, London Interbank Offered Rate, mega-rich, money market fund, new economy, Nick Leeson, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, Renaissance Technologies, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical model, technology bubble, too big to fail