Investors accustomed to shallow dips in the S&P 500 look to be losing faith.
Friday’s 2 percent rout in the benchmark for American equities pushed hedging activity to an unprecedented level. Total put and call options volume on the Cboe Volatility Index spiked to a record 3.6 million, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The fear gauge rose 29 percent to 17.32, the highest since Donald Trump’s election in November 2016.
The previous record for hedging activity was set on Dec. 1, with 3.1 million contracts.
To contact the reporters on this story: Elena Popina in New York at epopina@bloomberg.net, Cecile Vannucci in London at cvannucci1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Andrew Dunn
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