The stock market shook off its euro-jitters today, as the Dow
I've been writing in this column that the VIX Index -- the so-called "fear index" -- is disturbingly cheap, and it appears that Emanuel Derman, Goldman Sachs alum, one of the Wall Street's most respected quants, and the author of Models Behaving Badly, may agree with me. Derman re-tweeted a Financial Times article, Wall Street Fear Gauge Loses Scare Factor [sub required], on this very topic. The quote Derman highlighted in his tweet: "Low volatility measures indicate a false sense of security." I couldn't agree more, and I think investors shouldn't be surprised if an abrupt regime shift were to occur, with a spike in volatilities and sharp stock price declines. It's the current regime that is anomalous, so it's a mistake to expect it to continue.
Still, not all the news and data out there is negative. General Electric