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The VIX for those of you who are not aware of it, is often called the "Fear Index", it's a way to measure investor/trader sentiment, when we are near market bottoms there is a lot of fear and the VIX is typically very high, when we are near tops, there's a lot of complacency in the market and the VIX ix often near lows. Last week we saw the VIX post a closing low that hasn't been seen in 5 YEARS, since 2007!

Here's what the inverse relationship of the VIX compared to the SP-500 looks like.

Here the SPX is red and the VIX is green, note when the SPX is near tops (orange) the VIX shows a lot of complacency being near its lows, when the market is at its lows (white) the VIX spikes on Fear. We recently hit a new 5 year low in complacency as mentioned.

The VIX and volatility more broadly are part of the formula for pricing options, when volatility is low, options prices are lower, when volatility rises (the market drops), options prices become more expensive.

As for AAPL's options, they are breaking records for all new levels of complacency, the same as the VIX being very low. Complacency is near the highest levels since 2009, meaning traders are VERY confident that there's no downside risk in AAPL. The crowd is usually almost always wrong and the last 3 times this happened with AAPL, it saw a sell-off each time, some larger than others, some more dramatic then others in terms of how fast tit moved down. Complacency is almost always turned on its head.