Equity volatility declines substantially over 2021-2023, with the VIX sinking below 20 and VIX futures normalizing.

What counted as right

Status

resolved

Settled on

2023-12-31

Between 2021-01-01 and 2023-12-31 the CBOE VIX closes below 20 and stays materially lower than in 2020: (a) the VIX records closes below 20 during the window, and (b) the average daily close across 2021-2023 is well below the 2020 average of roughly 29, i.e. a sustained decline rather than isolated prints. Secondary marker: the VIX futures curve returns to its normal upward-sloping (contango) shape.

Fully resolved against primary Cboe data; all four figures above are computed directly from Cboe's official published daily index history CSVs, which were successfully retrieved this session (unlike the S&P records in this batch, these have genuine primary-source URLs). The criterion is compound and the legs do not all land the same way, so the quantify stage should weigh them explicitly rather than treating this as a clean binary. Legs (a) and the secondary contango marker are met without qualification. Leg (b) is met on the three-year aggregate (20.71 vs 29.25) but with a real caveat: the decline was not monotonic, and 2022 was a volatility re-expansion year in which the sub-20 regime essentially vanished (9% of sessions) and the annual mean sat only 12% below 2020. Whether that counts as 'a sustained decline rather than isolated prints' is a judgment call about the middle year; the honest reading is that 2021 and 2023 strongly confirm the call while 2022 cuts against the 'sustained' framing. Also worth noting for context: the 2021-2023 average of 20.71 remains well above the 2019 pre-pandemic average of 15.39, so volatility declined substantially from 2020 without fully returning to pre-COVID norms until 2023. Secondary-marker methodology note: VIX3M/VIX measures the Cboe volatility *index* term structure, which is the standard and widely used proxy for the VIX *futures* curve but is not literally futures settlement data; if the quantify stage wants the futures curve itself, Cboe's historical VIX futures settlement files would be the exact source. No conflicting credible evidence was found — the tension here is internal to the compound criterion, not between sources.

Sources

• 2021 Strategy Outlook: Exiting 'Greater Depression' = cycle reversion

  Fundstrat Global Advisors · 2020-12-16

  Source