The markets

Dow sets mark for most volatile December since 2008

This Santa rally feels more like a Grinch grind!

Market Watch, 

18 December, 2015

Cratering crude-oil prices are wreaking havoc on the stock market. But how rough has this whipsawing stretch of trading been for the Dow Jones Industrial AverageDJIA, -2.10% ? It is shaping up to be the most volatile December since 2008, according to Dow Jones data.

The Dow industrials finished about 370 points lower Friday to close out a historic week in which the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in nearly 10 years.

Although the move was meant to represent a vote of confidence by the central bank in the U.S. economy, the attempt to get the monetary policy back on normal footing and tanking oil prices CLF6, -1.14%  have combined to rattle investors.

So far in December, the Dow has registered 12 days with moves of 100 points or more between one day’s closing bell and the next. That’s the most days with moves of that magnitude in December since 2008, according to Dow Jones data, as the following table illustrates:

Month	# of Up days of greater than 100+ pts	# of Down days of greater than 100+ pts	Total
December 2008	7	6	13
December 2009	1	3	4
December 2010	2	0	2
December 2011	4	5	9
December 2012	3	2	5
December 2013	4	2	6
December 2014	4	5	9
December 2015	5	7	12
		Source: Dow Jones

Adding to the Fed-fueled volatility for this choppy week was a quadruple-witching period, in which stock-index futures and options and stock options and single-stock futures expired simultaneously.

The blue-chips gauge also recorded 118 days in 2015 with moves of 100 points or more, marking the most such one-day moves in a year since 2008, when there were 146 days with moves of 100 points or more.

Year	Number of up days of greater than 100 pts	Number of down days of greater than 100 pts	Total
2008	62	84	146
2009	48	44	92
2010	40	36	76
2011	53	51	104
2012	32	31	63
2013	43	30	73
2014	42	42	84
2015	60	58	118*
		Source: Dow Jones

The level of volatility has folks on edge. “This does signal a very worrisome note,” said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at Convergex, in an interview.

The so-called fear index, the CBOE Volatility Index VIX, +9.29% was up 5.4% at around 20 on Friday, although that left it far from its highest levels of the year.

Colas offered another troubling statistic, noting that this month’s moves are bucking a typically placid trend for December. Colas said that since 1990 the VIX has bottomed out for the year in December more than in any other month, as the table below indicates:

Source: Convergex

That is not happening now and that may be cause for fretting. That said, sometechnical analyst were seeing bullish trends in the market.