{
  "id": "fear-index.priced",
  "term": "fear index",
  "sense": "priced",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 18,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A price that a market reads as its own fear: what its members give for protection against a large move toward a wall.",
  "folk_gloss": "a nickname for a market measure of expected volatility, especially the VIX",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "fear.nearing-wall",
      "price.economic",
      "market.economic",
      "read.information",
      "member.social",
      "give.transfer",
      "protection.security",
      "against.opposition",
      "large.size",
      "motion.movement",
      "toward.spatial",
      "wall.range-end"
    ],
    "interaction": "Fear is not asked for but inferred from what traders pay for protection, so the report is made in money and can itself be traded.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "an affect with a price",
      "a report that is also a traded thing"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), nicknamed the fear index, is computed from S&P 500 option prices and rises when traders pay more to protect against large moves.",
      "domain": "finance"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "fear-and-greed.swing",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "the fear index measures one end of the swing"
    },
    {
      "id": "market-jitters.near-wall",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "jitters are the report; the index is its measured price"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "fear gauge",
    "fear index"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-fear-index.priced"
}