It’s not easy to find. I tried and failed for several years to find it. Finally “Rock Man” found it and commented on this post—the Google Finance ticker symbol is INDEXCBOE:VIX
Most of the CBOE’s other VIX related tickers are also available on Google Finance: VXV, VXO, VXD, VXAPL, VXEEM, VXEWZ, VXIBM, VXXLE, VXN, VIN, VIF—all prefixed by “INDEXCBOE:”. The volatility of volatility index VVIX is not present, or at least I couldn’t find it.
Historical data is available for all the indexes I checked, but not for a particularly long time—the VIX data only goes back to 2007, however it does provide historical data back to 2011 for VIN and VIF that I’ve not been able to find anywhere else. The VIN and VIF indexes are part of the calculation for the VIX itself.
Another source of free delayed quotes and historical data is Yahoo Finance (ticker ^VIX)—they also provide free delayed quotes on VIX options. Schwab’s ticker for the fear gauge is $VIX, Bloomberg uses VIX:IND, and Fidelity uses just plain VIX. The VIX index is also known as the Fear Index, the Fear gauge, and the Volatility index
For more on the VIX index see my FAQs and VIX quotes, VIX option quotes.
For a full set of symbols for Volatility ETNs / ETFs plus some other useful symbols see volatility tickers.
Found it in search results for “volatility” in the Compare “Enter ticker here” box:
Goolge Finance ticker for S&P 500 VIX is “INDEXCBOE:VIX”.
Hi Rock Man,
Wow! Thanks! I had figured Google didn’t have it–for a search engine giant they make it pretty hard to find one of the top 10 indexes around. I will update my post and do a tweet regarding this in the next day or two. Thanks again.
–Vance