Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit DAVID GREENE, HOST: It's official, Wall Street is bored. Wall Street being Wall Street, there is, of course, a number that measures such things. It's called the Vix. Often people call it the fear index. But the numbers are so low these days, maybe that name doesn't work. Here is David Kestenbaum from our Planet Money team. DAVID KESTENBAUM, BYLINE: The Vix, technically the volatility index, is calculated by a computer somewhere at the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the number is studied by traders and analysts all over the world. KESTENBAUM: Who started calling it the fear index? BOB WHALEY: I did (laughing). That was a term I had coined in one of the papers I had written. KESTENBAUM: This is Bob Whaley, economist at Vanderbilt University, who invented the thing. The math behind it is a little complicated. But the fear index is basically a measure of how much people are willing to pay for an insurance policy - an insurance policy protecting
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