Anticipating trouble and reeling from the recent downturn, the global stock market is gripped by fear.
Wall Street's most closely watched gauge of investor anxiety, the Cboe Volatility Index, often called the "fear index," jumped to 65 points, a level not seen since March 2020. The stock market volatility indicator has reached its peak since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Notably, the index measuring expected market volatility over the next 30 days rose to a record high of 85.47 points in March 2020, following the Federal Reserve's emergency actions.
Echoing the global stock market decline, Wall Street's so-called "fear index" briefly spiked to 65 points from around 17 just a week ago, before adjusting to 42.
Experts attribute such a massive slump in the equity market to capital outflows from the US market, which triggered a major sell-off in the Japanese stock market and set off a domino effect.
Last week, US equities suffered heavy losses, with the broad S&P 500 index falling by 4.27%, the Dow Jones - by 2.72%, and the Nasdaq Composite - by 6.35%. In Japan, the decline was even more pronounced, with SoftBank Group, the world's largest technology investor, seeing a stock rout of nearly 19% in a single day.
