"The direction is unimportant, the volatility is absolutely important - and there is an awful lot of it(volatility) at the moment." I am not sure what you mean

"The direction is unimportant, the volatility is absolutely important - and there is an awful lot of it(volatility) at the moment." I am not sure what you mean by this - the asset market in general and the stock market in particular is historically non-volatile right now. Almost all asset classes are in lock-step correlation and fear indexes like the VIX are in such permanent languish that shorting the VIX has been one of the more profitable strategies for trading desks over the last few years.