What The Charts Reveal Now.

Increasing volatility quickly followed by decreasing volatility: it’s the sort of thing that typically keeps Wall Street on edge. The early August selling was more extreme than usual, as measured by the volatility index which took off to a level unseen since 2020.

Then, the buy-the-dip crowd emerged, apparently well-trained over the last few years to jump back in.

Here’s how the monthly chart for the fear index — the VIX — looks now:

It hasn’t reached this level of fear since 2020. On the other hand, 2020 was worse and the level this month quickly dropped again to relatively normal levels.

Here’s how the daily chart looks:

This close-up view shows how the fear index remains above the May/June/July levels but it’s back in the direction of “what’s to worry about?”

The CBOE…