Satanic Black Magic Into the Weekend

The easiest thing to do right now is throw a Paulie Walnuts-type tantrum and decry today's pop in the VIX as merely overzealous hedging into the weekend in light of the Israel/Hamas escalation, bound to lead to a VIX collapse next week. 

My take, as you might imagine, is a bit different: The VIX has already been working on a higher base for weeks now after several thrusts down in the low-teens, as you can see below on the VIX daily chart. 

While I agree that performing rigorous technical analysis on an instrument like the VIX should be taken with a grain of salt (after all, we are talking about a derivative of derivatives, etc.), it is certainly worthwhile to note that the latest rally in stocks did not see the VIX melt down like previous instances below 15. 

And now we have a VIX back on the cusp of 20 (which is still low compared to where it should be, in my view) headed into a weekend with way more questions than answers in the Middle East. 

As for the, "it's all priced in!" crowd, need I remind you the same exact people on social media and financial news television said the exact same thing about COVID in February 2020? 

You can delete tweets. But you cannot delete my memory. At least not yet.