Keep Your Eyes on the VIX
There are a number of things that would have caught a savvy investor's eye on Thursday. The Dow was off nearly 1%. The S&P 500 was down almost 1.5%. And the Nasdaq lost more than 2.1%.
But while these are the headline numbers that investors tend to watch, there's one metric that moved much more than any of these. And it also happens to be the single most telling gauge of the stock market right now -- at least in my opinion.
I'm talking about the S&P Volatility Index (VOLATILITYINDICES: ^VIX), more commonly known as the VIX. This is an index that measures anticipated volatility in stocks over the next 30 days. It does so by looking at activity in the market for puts and calls -- derivatives that allow someone to bet on the direction of a particular stock or index over a given set of time in the future.
Source: Fool.com
