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- The 'Social $VIX' From Stocktwits....AND ...What The Hell Is All The Fear About?
The 'Social $VIX' From Stocktwits....AND ...What The Hell Is All The Fear About?
Is it a 'little disturbance' or a 'cratering'?
Howard Lindzon
March 07, 2025
Happy Friday.
While Stocktwits has not formally launched its unique ‘fear and greed’ index or what I like to call it our ‘social $VIX ( ▼ 0.5% ) ‘ product, I have been eyeballing it the last few weeks as the market has dropped to see how it is behaving. I suspected a spike, but have been surprised by the size and persistence of the spike. We have now spiked past March the 2020 COVID highs when the $VIX ( ▼ 0.5% ) hit 90. Back then I started my first podcast called ‘Panic With Friends’. I have no intention of bringing that podcast back back even though the spike says we are in the middle of a panic.
Have a look below:
Every panic is different and as I always say, if you must panic, panic first.
A better time to panic was back in December and January when people had FOMO (fear of missing out). Today, people are pouring money into ‘Nancy Pelosi’ trackers and other lazy themes.
So, what the hell is happening?
I like Josh Brown’s take the best so far. Like me, he digests a lot of data and is in the habit of writing a lot and talking to a wide range of people on the subject. The gist:
“A little disturbance.”
This is the phrase the President used last night to dismiss economic and market concerns about his tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China. He spoke for an hour and half and barely said anything else about it. My expectation was that he would make the case for why this disturbance makes sense for the economy, the business community and the American worker. He didn’t bother explaining anything.
A lot of people believe that President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are deliberately orchestrating a recession. But I don’t.
I am willing to entertain the idea that Bessent and Musk (and possibly Lutnick) have managed to convince the President that the stock market volatility will be temporary and not do any lasting damage to his “winning” image in the eyes of the voters. I just don’t believe that they’re willing to let this go as far as “cratering GDP” - not my word, people at JPMorgan and Goldman are saying the word cratering.
I’m sure this can go on for a few months. I just can’t see it going on for a few years. Long enough, perhaps, to generate a few dozen “Apple and Toyota are opening more plants in Kentucky!” type headlines. The problem is that consumer sentiment will worsen so long as this uncertainty lingers. And long-term unemployment will tick up. These negative headlines will swamp the MAGA-approved headlines about manufacturing wins and the policy’s going to change.
I don’t agree with the Galaxy Brain people who spend 90% of their day scrolling and threading amid the archeological ruins of Twitter. “This is about lowering mortgage rates and stock prices so Gen Z can break into the economy!”
Smoke less crack.
I am with Josh.
As far as ‘cratering’ goes, there is a lot of that going on. You can see it In the spike in Stocktwits social $VIX with the engagement around tickers with prices plummeting - $QQQ ( ▼ 0.34% ) $APP ( ▲ 3.27% ) $TSLA ( ▲ 0.17% ) $PLTR ( ▲ 1.5% ) .
There are some long in tooth and broken trends right now with ‘too many friends’. For example, Tesla. It is easy to hate on Elon, but at this point not smart to ignore it. Beth Kindig is a great technology analyst and stock picker points out Tesla has a ‘demand problem’…
I am part of that ‘spike’ in the Stocktwits social $VIX ( ▼ 0.5% ) . Our unique community and data has a lot to worry about - and it is very different than the last big panic of COVID. Yes, the same dude is President, but Elon is now his best pal and his chainsaw is getting old pretty fast. We all know the government wastes our money and we all want government cuts. Clinton once did this as a democrat.
What else is on Stocktwits community mind and therefore their keyboards?
The big one is tariffs, but a cratering GDP is not helping.
There is also the price plunge in the Stocktwits communities favorite stocks, inflation, higher interest rates than COVID, a couple of wars, our allies are being tossed around and aside and the new trending words ‘austerity’ and ‘balancing the budget’.
I hope this helps.
PS…
My ‘degenerate economy’ index is now at 14 percent cash and I can see taking it as high as 25 percent, but it has held up well so far and still up 2 percent this year.
Also there are still a bunch of trends with NO friends. Look at Europe for example below. The Germany ETF $EWG ( ▼ 1.74% ) has also broken out to all time highs.
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