The Cboe Volatility Index (VIX), Wall Street's fear gauge, surged past 22 on Friday for the first time in four months, primarily driven by a sell-off in AI-related stocks. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2% on the day, marking its largest single-day drop since June 5, with new cloud service provider CoreWeave's shares dropping 13%. Traders are betting on further upside for the VIX by November 18, buying a large number of VIX call options. One trade involved buying 9,200 call options with a strike price of $20 expiring on November 18 for $1.7 million, while another saw 12,500 call options with a strike price of $23 expiring on November 18 purchased for $1.1 million. Brent Kochuba, founder of SpotGamma, stated that the rapid rise in the VIX and the volume of options trading indicate that traders are actively hedging against greater market downside risk.