By the Numbers: 2026’s ‘Volatility’

Here is a string of numbers for you: -2.6, 0.3, -0.3, -1.6, 1.8. These are the S&P 500’s daily price returns, in percent, from Friday June 5 through Thursday June 6, a week’s worth of trading days.^[i] Given three of these five numbers are greater than 1% up or down, talk of volatility kicking off is increasingly commonplace, as if this spell is unusually wobbly. Sorry, but it isn’t. We crunched the numbers and made some charts to help illustrate that 2026 is a pretty calm year overall.

Consider Exhibit 1, which tallies the number of days when the S&P 500 moved more than 1% in either direction. For this year, we imputed a full-year tally by taking the percentage of trading days with that large of a move thus far (27 out of 112, or 24.1%) and applying it to this year’s total scheduled trading days (251). This is hardly scientific, as past performance doesn’t predict future returns, and it isn’t an actual projection—it just envelope-maths a partial year into a full one for better comparison. At any rate, 2026’s frequency of biggish moves is pretty dang average thus far. A little higher than 2025, a little lower than 2023, and way below recent mega-volatile years like 2020 and 2022.

Exhibit 1: A History of Daily Swings Wilder than +/-1%

Source: FactSet, as of 6/12/2026. S&P 500 daily percentage moves, 1/4/1928 – 6/12/2026. 2026’s bar shows what the full year’s tally would be if the frequency of larger moves to date applied over the whole year.

Narrow the focus to daily moves bigger than 2% up or down, and 2026 starts looking even tamer, as Exhibit 2 shows.

Exhibit 2: A History of Daily Swings Wilder than +/-2%

Source: FactSet, as of 6/12/2026. S&P 500 daily percentage moves, 1/4/1928 – 6/12/2026. 2026’s bar shows what the full year’s tally would be if the frequency of larger moves to date applied over the whole year.

Yet things clearly feel volatile to a lot of people. We have a hunch why: Volatility tends to come in clumpy patches, as Fisher Investments founder and Executive Chairman Ken Fisher often quips. You can have a long stretch of mild daily moves and then boom! A clump of big moves. Big down days tend to cluster with big up days (which is why you tend to get the most big moves in bear market and early bull market years). This year had another rocky clump during the Iran war’s first month or so, when everyone hyperfocused on the Strait of Hormuz. Since bigger daily moves tend to get more headlines, they loom larger in the public consciousness. It seems to us like people are anchoring to these bursts, ignoring the large clumps of milder moves before and after.

Exhibit 3: 2026’s Daily Return Magnitudes

Source: FactSet, as of 6/12/2026. S&P 500 daily percentage moves (absolute value), 1/2/2026 – 6/11/2026.

That says a lot about human behavior and how people’s minds work. Fascinating, if you are into that (we kinda are). But it doesn’t tell you what markets will do next. Again, past performance doesn’t predict future performance. Volatility is performance, so volatility doesn’t predict volatility or a lack thereof. Maybe we get many more big swings from here. Midterm election years tend to be more volatile, so it wouldn’t shock. Or maybe so many people expect volatility that it gets priced in and stocks do something different. You can’t predict it, and we don’t think you need to. Market returns are about how the daily moves up and down even out into a trend, regardless of magnitude.

Regardless, as it stands, we aren’t in some super-volatile era, regardless of what some headlines may say. Relative to history, this year’s market moves are boringly normal.