As the panic fades, buyers’ nerves are nonetheless jangling. In the intervening time, stockmarkets have stopped convulsing and the costs of American Treasury bonds are not in freefall. But share indices throughout America, Asia and Europe have hardly recovered their poise (see chart 1); as an alternative, day-to-day drops of a share level or extra have turn into unremarkable. The VIX index—Wall Avenue’s “worry gauge”, which measures anticipated volatility utilizing the market worth of insurance coverage in opposition to it—has fallen from its nerve-shredding peak reached a fortnight in the past. It’s nonetheless at a stage final seen in 2022, amid a grinding bear market (see chart 2). The worth of gold has been breaking report after report. Traders, in different phrases, are offloading danger wherever they will and getting ready for a drawn-out stoop.
