Feng Yu
Posted on Sep 10
AI-assisted
In early September 2026, the VIX sat near its five-year calm, while the SKEW index sat near its high — a market both quiet and terrified. That contradiction was the subject of my last article. This one is about something more dangerous than expensive tail insurance: what happens when leverage is hiding in a calm market. Because a crash with leverage isn't an event. It's an engine that runs on its own fuel.
The mechanism is simple, and it has ended markets twice in living memory (2008, March 2020):
