By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed
NEW YORK, June 3 (Reuters) - Wall Street's nine-week rally has pushed U.S. stock indexes to successive new highs, but people who watch key options metrics warn that signs are mounting that a volatility shock could be around the corner.
"This is very, very ripe for what I like to call volatility spasms," said Brent Kochuba, founder of options analytic service SpotGamma.
The S&P 500 has risen nearly 20% from its late March lows over nine straight weeks of gains, despite elevated oil
prices and a war in the Middle East. U.S. stock investors have looked past that while betting that the AI investment boom will keep lifting semiconductor and other tech stocks.
But under the hood, various measures used to gauge the longevity of the rally have begun to flash amber.
Trading in the options market shows investors forsaking hedges, instead focusing on using options to position for further upside. Skew, an options gauge of demand for protection against a stock market drop, signals anemic demand for protection while stock investors chase further gains.
Correlation, a gauge of how in sync stock movements have been lately, has sunk to near record lows, ripe for a rebound should a volatility shock present itself.
These and other signals could presage a sharp pullback.
"I don't think this resolves by just having a nice period of calm churn for a couple of weeks. I think this resolves by crashing down," Kochuba said.
"The market has gotten significantly more fragile," agreed Maxwell Grinacoff, head of U.S. equity derivatives research at UBS.
"Turbu-lens," a UBS machine-learning framework designed to forecast market vulnerability over the next month, has risen to 0.8, where a reading of 1 signals the highest potential for market stress and a reading of -1 points to lowest potential for market stress.
While the elevated reading does not predict a market pullback, it does signal that when a drop occurs it is likely to be violent.
"When you're in these more extreme levels of fragility, you tend to see higher volatility reactivity," Grinacoff said.
Analysts warned that the longer these conditions linger, the more likely it is that some catalyst provokes an outsized market reaction.
TOO MUCH EXUBERANCE
Before the rally began nine weeks ago, investors had been jettisoning stocks over fears of an energy shock. Now they have been lapping up equities at a frantic pace on hopes of a resolution to the Iran conflict.
Robust quarterly earnings, renewed optimism about AI investment and excitement over upcoming high-profile IPOs have stoked risk appetite on Wall Street.
"Investors have been reaching for upside calls which has been inverting call skew for many stocks," Eric Johnston, Cantor Fitzgerald chief equity and macro strategist, said in a note on Monday. Johnston noted that 25% of S&P 100 stocks have three-month inverted call skew, where demand for upside outstrips demand for protection. That is close to the highest percentage since January 2021.
"This suggests too much exuberance and speculation," he said, leaving the market more vulnerable to a pullback than usual.
"It does feel like the setup for a potential volatility event," said Chris Murphy, co-head of derivative strategy at Susquehanna Financial.
"The concern is not that hedging flows are warning of imminent stress, but that the lack of hedging could make a pullback more disorderly if the nine-week rally finally stalls," Murphy said.
CORRELATION CRASH
One of the biggest areas of concern, strategists said, was the plunge in correlation among stocks. For May, correlation for S&P 500 constituents slipped to record lows, data from S&P Dow Jones Indices showed as of May 31, 2026.
Low correlation can calm the market, as disparate moves in individual stocks cancel out much of the index-level volatility. Yet this can also mask market fragility and give way to a sudden burst of volatility.
There have been five instances when correlation plunged to near zero in the last five years, UBS's Grinacoff said.
"Every single time you've had a volatility event thereafter within a month's time typically," he said.
Grinacoff said investors should treat these market signals as a call to start building hedges slowly.
While there is nothing stopping market calm from lingering at these levels, the eventual break is more a matter of when than if, analysts said.
"(It) can reverse quickly if leadership breaks or macro headlines force correlations higher," Susquehanna's Murphy said.
The next few weeks are ripe with news catalysts, including the June meeting of the Federal Reserve, monthly options expiration on the third Friday of June, the eagerly awaited IPO for SpaceX and the ongoing conflict with Iran.
"You need a trigger ... but I think the more stretched you get, the less sensitive the trigger can be," SpotGamma's Kochuba said.
(Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed; editing by Megan Davies and David Gregorio)
