Doped-up stocks will party on

The CBOE Volatility index, or “fear gauge”, which tracks the extent to which investors try to hedge against market turbulence, hit a 24-year low last week as US stocks hit new all-time highs.

866_MW_P06_Markets

Donald Trump: a "sage assessment" of the state of the markets
(Image credit: 2017 Getty Images)

Donald Trump's cryptic remarks last week about "the calm before the storm" "could have been a sage assessment of the world's stock and bond markets", says Randall Forsyth in Barron's. They look ominously relaxed. The CBOE Volatility index, or "fear gauge", which tracks the extent to which investors try to hedge against market turbulence, hit a 24-year low last week as Wall Street kept marching to new all-time highs. By late last week the S&P 500 had closed at a new record for eight days on the trot the first time this has happened since 1997, in the middle of the dotcom market surge.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.