Upcoming uncertainty
We live in uncertain times. Global pandemic, geopolitical turmoil, recessions - all of these contribute to peoples' general sense of unease. As Bloomberg noted, the gap between first month VIX futures and spot VIX is at the highest level in years. Perhaps this is due to election uncertainty:
When this happened in the past, the S&P had a tendency to pullback over the next 2 weeks. But most of the historical cases were from more than 10 years ago:
On the otherhand, VIX had a tendency to rally over the next week:
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is down 4 weeks in a row from an all-time high. The last 2 times this happened (in 2019) were close to marking the bottom in their respective pullbacks.