Stock Market · Volatility and uncertainty

Equity Market Volatility Tracker (since 1985)

A monthly count of newspaper articles about stock market volatility, scaled to track the VIX (Baker, Bloom, Davis and Kost), which lets volatility be followed back to 1985.

Equity market volatility tracker: 21.99 (Sep 2026).
A year earlier: 22.33 (Sep 2025), a change of −1.5%.
Highest on record here: 69.84 (Oct 2008); lowest: 8.03 (Jun 1985).

Year	Average	Year close
1985	10.32	10.65
1986	12.80	10.96
1987	22.20	37.80
1988	19.44	15.29
1989	15.64	16.68
1990	17.16	16.32
1991	15.69	14.93
1992	15.79	11.12
1993	14.79	12.68
1994	17.51	20.48
1995	17.03	18.06
1996	18.84	20.90

Source: FRED EMVOVERALLEMV (Equity Market Volatility Tracker: Overall). Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Gray bands mark U.S. recessions as dated by the NBER (FRED USREC).

The interactive chart loads with JavaScript. All charts