The World Health Organization classified the recent coronavirus outbreak in China as a global health emergency on Thursday, as the virus continues to spread within the country and across the world. News about the spreading virus has slowly impacted markets across the globe and in the U.S., where an index for predicting volatility in the stock market has steadily increased since the virus was announced.
The VIX Index is a score based on the stocks of the top 500 companies in the U.S. market and measures the expectation of volatility over the next 30 days. A score below 10 is considered to be low, while a score above 20 is considered high.
Since news of the virus broke in early January, the VIX score has steadily climbed over the last weeks, eventually hitting a peak of 18.32 on January 30 before falling back down below 16 at the end of the day. That’s the highest score since October 2019, when trade tensions between the U.S. and China were at their highest.






















