Market statistic of the year (or maybe the half-century)

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Investors know they’ve lived through extraordinary volatility in the U.S. stock market this fall. But these numbers from Howard Silverblatt, senior analyst at Standard & Poor’s, really put it in perspective:

--- Over the last 60 trading days, the S&P 500 index has moved 5% or more, up or down, in 17 sessions.

--- Prior to this it had taken 50 years to total up 17 sessions of 5% or greater moves.

In other words, we’ve had as much volatility in the last two months as over the previous five decades, by this particular measure.

The last 5%-or-greater change in the S&P index was the 8.9% drop on Dec. 1. The biggest move during the 60 days was an 11.6% jump on Oct. 13.

Before this period, the last time the index had moved more than 5% was on July 29, 2002, when it rallied 5.4%.

One encouraging note: The so-called VIX index, a measure of expected stock market volatility, slid 9.4% this week to close Friday at 54.28 -- the lowest since Nov. 4.

The VIX has dropped nearly 33% since it hit a record high 80.86 on Nov. 20, which was the day most major market indexes hit their lows of the bear market (at least so far).

I explained how the VIX works in this post last June -- when a level of 30 on the index was considered a high reading.

Little did we know.

-- Tom Petruno