🌪️ India VIX & Volatility Regime
"India VIX is 14.3" is not information. India VIX at the 29th percentile of its own five-year range, falling, while the index rises and breadth improves — that is information. This page never shows the number without its context.
Volatility regime
The bands are conventional reference points, not thresholds with predictive content. What actually carries information is the percentile above: a VIX of 16 was elevated in 2021 and unremarkable in 2020, and only its own history says which.
India VIX against the Nifty 50
Roughly the last two years. VIX on the left axis, Nifty on the right. The two are usually inversely related — volatility spikes on the way down and decays on the way up — but the relationship is a tendency, not an identity.
What India VIX actually measures
India VIX is derived from the order book of near-month Nifty options. It expresses, in annualised percentage terms, how much movement the options market is pricing in over the next 30 days — not how much movement has already happened, and not a direction.
A VIX of 12 implies the options market expects the Nifty to stay within roughly ±12% over a year, or about ±3.5% over a month, with the usual statistical caveats. A low reading means options are cheap relative to history, which is a statement about option pricing before it is a statement about risk.
Low VIX is not the same as low risk. Extended calm periods are when positioning gets crowded and complacent; extremely high readings have historically clustered near market lows rather than highs. Neither observation is a timing tool, and this page does not present one.
Questions
What is India VIX?
A volatility index computed by NSE from the bid-ask quotes of near and next-month Nifty 50 option contracts. It expresses the expected annualised volatility of the Nifty over the coming 30 days, in percent.
Is a high India VIX bearish?
It indicates the options market is pricing in larger moves, which in practice usually coincides with falling prices because demand for downside protection is what bids volatility up. But VIX has no direction of its own, and extreme readings have historically occurred closer to lows than to highs.
What is a normal level for India VIX?
Over the last five years the median has sat in the low-to-mid teens, but "normal" drifts with the regime. That is why this page leads with the percentile rather than the level — a percentile is comparable across eras, an absolute number is not.
How far back does the history go?
Our stored India VIX series starts in 2019, which covers the 2020 volatility shock and several subsequent calm and stressed regimes. The number of sessions behind the percentile is printed at the top of the page.
How to read this page. Everything here is a description of data the exchange has already published — it is not a forecast, a recommendation, or a signal to buy or sell. Labels such as "accumulation", "short buildup" or "support" name a pattern in the numbers, nothing more. Volatility measures dispersion, not direction, and does not indicate whether the market will rise or fall.
Flash Finance is not a SEBI-registered investment adviser. Exchange data is sourced from NSE's public end-of-day files and may be revised by the exchange. Verify anything you intend to act on against the exchange's own records.
Data as of the 2026-09-18 session · built 2026-09-20 22:25 IST · source: NSE India VIX index history. Figures are as published by the exchange and are for information only, not investment advice.
