Volatility · Lesson 02 of 5 · Concept
India VIX
India VIX is NSE’s index of expected NIFTY volatility over the next 30 days, computed from the order book of near-month options and quoted as an annualised percentage. It fell steadily through late September 2026, from 13.17 on the 17th to 10.35 on the 24th.
NSE India VIX · MarketCue daily capture in premarket_dashboard
What the number is
India VIX is derived from the bid-ask quotes of near and next-month NIFTY options, not from a single contract, and it is expressed as an annualised percentage over a 30-day horizon. A reading of 11 means the market is pricing roughly 11% annualised movement.
It is a magnitude, not a direction. A rising VIX says larger moves are being priced; it says nothing about which way. The persistent association with falling markets comes from the fact that falls tend to be faster than rises, not from anything in the construction.
To convert a reading to a horizon that is useful, divide by the square root of the periods in a year. At 11.00, a one-day move of roughly 0.7% was being priced.
The week in the data
Across six sessions the index fell without interruption: 13.17 on 17 September, then 12.29, 11.39, 11.25, 11.00, and 10.35 on the 24th. That is a decline of about a fifth in a week.
Over the same stretch, the implied volatility we solved from the at-the-money NIFTY call on 23 September was 11.15%, against an India VIX of 11.00 that day. The two are built differently — one from a whole order book across two expiries, the other from a single traded premium — and they landed within a fifth of a point of each other.
That agreement is worth noting because it is not guaranteed. When a single strike diverges materially from the index, the difference is usually telling you something about that strike rather than about the market.
Common questions
What does India VIX measure?
Expected NIFTY volatility over the next 30 calendar days, computed from the order book of near and next-month NIFTY options and quoted as an annualised percentage. It measures magnitude, not direction.
Is a falling India VIX bullish?
It indicates that smaller moves are being priced, which is not the same as a direction. India VIX fell from 13.17 to 10.35 across six sessions in September 2026, a stretch that contained both rising and falling days.
Written and maintained by MarketCue research · Updated 9:30 AM IST · 23 October 2026
How these figures are produced
Every price on these pages was traded on the exchange and is read from our own option-chain capture, which records the NIFTY and SENSEX chains once a minute through the session. Each page names the session its figures come from.
Figures that a model produced rather than the market — the Greeks, implied volatility — are labelled as model outputs wherever they appear, and never presented beside traded prices without saying which is which. The pricing is checked against published reference values on every change.
Where our own data cannot support a claim, the page says so instead of generalising. MarketCue is not a registered investment adviser, research analyst or broker under SEBI regulations.