Benchmark

Options Craze Rewriting Rules of VIX, S&P 500 Relationship

  • Two weeks of synchronized gains are the longest in 14 months
  • Momentum chasing is rampant with market in epic winning run
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The day-trader obsession with using bullish options to speculate on stocks is doing strange things to the age-old relationship between the U.S. equity market and its benchmark volatility index.

Rather than move in the opposite direction, as the S&P 500 and Cboe Volatility Index have almost always done for three decades, they went up in unison for two weeks -- a stretch of synchronized increases not seen in 14 months.