The VIX gets the headlines. Its bond-market cousin does the quiet, load-bearing work underneath — and as of today it has a page of its own.

Everyone knows the VIX: the "fear gauge", the number news anchors pronounce gravely just before the ad break. Fewer people know the ICE BofA MOVE index, which does the same job for US Treasuries. It prices how far the options market expects bond yields to swing over the next month.

That should be boring. Treasuries are the calm part of the portfolio, the asset your grandparents bought precisely so they could stop thinking about it. When the calm part starts twitching, it is worth a look — which is more or less the whole pitch for this page.

What's on it

• The number and its mood. Current level, daily change and a regime badge running from Calm (under 70) to Crisis (over 130). At the 23 September close it read 95.45, firmly Elevated, after jumping 17.6% in a single session. Bonds, apparently, had a day.
• Five years of history with shaded regime bands and the greatest hits marked: COVID, the UK gilt crisis, SVB and friends.
• MOVE vs VIX, plus their ratio. A high ratio means the bond market is more nervous than the stock market. That gap tends to close; the interesting part is which side blinks first.
• MOVE vs the 10-year yield, to see whether volatility arrives with rates rising or falling.
• A stats panel: five-year percentile, z-score, one-year range, and the implied daily move in basis points (MOVE divided by the square root of 252, for those who like to check the arithmetic).
• A plain-English "how to read it" for everyone who just wants to know whether to worry.

Why we bothered

Treasuries are the collateral under most of the leverage in the financial system. When their volatility rises, margin requirements rise with it, and leveraged holders sell whatever they can — not just bonds. Bond vol has a habit of turning up first. We would rather see it first too.

Also, it had been living as a single chart spread across three different pages. It deserved a room of its own.

Find it under Markets → Global Bonds → MOVE Index, or press Ctrl+K and type "move". It refreshes twice a day on its own, so there is no button to mash.