Amy Silverman RY

Managing Director, Royal Bank of Canada

Only a matter of time until we see volatility bleed into equity markets: RBC's Amy Wu Silverman

📅 Oct 06, 2026 CNBC Television 8 MIN 43745 VIEWS 40 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS

Amy Wu Silverman, RBC Capital Markets head of derivatives strategy, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the latest market trends, what options say about equities, and more.

What Amy Silverman said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Amy Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets, argued that existential AI risk ('P-doom') is mispriced in options markets, which remain focused on the right-tail AI momentum trade. She illustrated with a flood insurance analogy: a shift from 0.5% to 20% risk should change pricing, but hasn't occurred. She defined P-doom as amorphous scenarios like a 24-48 hour grid failure, and noted prediction markets may list rogue AI agent events. She discussed geopolitical risks like Iran bleeding into oil and rates volatility relative to VIX, and noted narrow market breadth: 73% of stocks have negative beta. She doubted midterms would be a clearing event, predicting around 60% chance of a Democratic sweep, with gridlock better for markets, and highlighted MOVE vs VIX at highs.

Key takeaways

P-doom existential AI risk is mispriced; options markets focus on right-tail momentum trade, not left-tail catastrophe.
73% of stocks in the S&P have negative beta to the market, showing narrow breadth concentrated in AI trade.
Predicted around 60% probability of a Democratic sweep in midterms; gridlock would be better for markets.
MOVE vs VIX (Treasury vs equity implied volatility) keeps rising, signaling bond market stress not reflected in equities.
Midterms not a clearing event; presidential primaries and bills starting January 2027 create market overhang.

Numbers and commitments

Figure	What it refers to	Type	At
0.5%	chance of house flooding in analogy	other	0:45
20%	higher chance of house flooding in analogy	other	0:45
24 to 48 hours	duration of grid outage in P-doom example	other	2:07
73%	share of S&P stocks with negative beta	metric	5:32
60%	predicted probability of Democratic sweep in midterms	commitment	7:05
January 27th	start of bills being discussed	timeline	7:05
15	current VIX level	metric	8:01

Chapters

0:00P-doom mispricing in options
0:45Flood insurance analogy
2:07Defining P-doom scenarios
3:45Prediction markets and rogue agents
4:38Geopolitical risk and volatility
5:51Narrow market breadth
7:05Midterms as clearing event
8:05MOVE vs VIX divergence

Questions asked in this interview

3:34You think that there will be member firms that are set up to trade something like this that's going to happen?
5:07Could have made money on call options if you bought after the war started, right?
5:32Or if you sold, where you didn't regret it, right?
6:38Does the house have flood insurance, this house?

Interviewer 0:07 ↗

We're working on that. It's a futures this morning. More upward pressure. Joining us now, Amy Wu Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets. And we were talking about it before we went to break. Amy, the P-doom trade, which is the existential risk from AI. And you're just sort of making a, I guess, a philosophical view observation that it's mispriced because the end of the world isn't being priced anywhere.

Amy Silverman 0:37 ↗

I'm being a little hyperbolic, but I'll give you a more straightforward example.

Interviewer 0:41 ↗

So the flood example.

Amy Silverman 0:42 ↗

The flood example.

Interviewer 0:43 ↗

That's okay. I got that one.

Amy Silverman 0:45 ↗

You know, look, if I told you there was like a 0.5% chance that your house is going to flood, are you going to do anything about it? Are you going to buy flood insurance? Maybe not. Most people would say that's a small risk. I can tolerate it. But if I said, look, that risk is actually like 20%, does that mean it's going to happen? No, but you'd think twice about your behavior given that risk, even though the risk itself is one that is unlikely to occur.

Interviewer 1:11 ↗

Yeah, but the pricing probably changed pretty rapidly for my insurance if it's 0.5% versus 20%.

Amy Silverman 1:17 ↗

And that's exactly my point. Your insurance price should change. And my point is right now, when you look at the derivatives market, there is no change. So we've had people come out. You can say however you feel about Jacob Coxon or Dario Amodei and what they believe. But the point is, I think overall, if you believe the left tail ought to be a little higher, like maybe not 0.5%, maybe as high as 20%. The point is that shift hasn't occurred at all in the options market. Not only that, it's far more focused on the right tail risk. It's still much more focused on the AI momentum trade. And so my point is, if you could say what is one thing that's really mispriced, it's this idea of this P-doom not being there at all, binary.

Interviewer 2:01 ↗

But let's talk about what P-doom is. Yeah.

Amy Silverman 2:04 ↗

Let's go through an example of it. I'll give you mine.

Interviewer 2:07 ↗

Sure.

Amy Silverman 2:07 ↗

My example is the grid goes down in some city, maybe not the whole country, but in a city for a period of 24 to 48 hours. It does not mean it's not recoverable. But what does the market do once everything comes back online? That's my question.

Interviewer 2:23 ↗

Right.

Amy Silverman 2:24 ↗

Well, historically, when there have been blackouts, for example, in a city, you have not seen the market tank. When those things have happened, it's just simply come back.

Interviewer 2:34 ↗

But that's probably because the market doesn't anticipate that this is now a new reality. And that could happen at any point.

Amy Silverman 2:40 ↗

I mean, like AWS went down, if you remember last year, for about six or eight hours, and things happened. The question is, when people talk about P-doom, do you believe that we're talking about a blackout for 24 hours or 48 hours? Are you then talking about riots in the streets during that? Do you expect people to be stealing things from stores? Anyone die? No. And older people who are...

Interviewer 3:04 ↗

When you say it, I think of a couple people in hospitals all of a sudden dying because they don't have access to electricity. You're saying, but you mean it's not the capital P, the existential risk of all. Because if that happened, you got no one to clear the trade after you.

Amy Silverman 3:18 ↗

I think my point is it's very amorphous right now, right? The fact that you're sort of trying to come up with examples, you're trying to come up with examples. It's the point that...

Interviewer 3:27 ↗

It's a capital P because you're talking small p, people die, stuff happens, amorphous.

Amy Silverman 3:31 ↗

It is very difficult for a market to price it all.

20 more exchanges in this transcript

Cite this transcript

APA, MLA, BibTeX

APA

Silverman, A. (2026, October 6). Only a matter of time until we see volatility bleed into equity markets: RBC's Amy Wu Silverman [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3008545/

MLA

Amy Silverman. "Only a matter of time until we see volatility bleed into equity markets: RBC's Amy Wu Silverman." CNBC Television, 6 Oct. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3008545/.

BibTeX

@misc{silverman2026_3008545,
  author       = {Amy Silverman},
  title        = {Only a matter of time until we see volatility bleed into equity markets: RBC's Amy Wu Silverman},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {oct},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3008545/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}

▶

Key Quotes (2)

“I'm being a little hyperbolic, but I'll give you a more straightforward example. So the flood example. You know, look, if I told you there was like a 0.5% chance that your house is going to flood, are you going to do anything about it? Are you going to buy flood insurance? Maybe not. Most people would say that's a small risk. I can tolerate it. But if I said, look, that risk is actually like 20%, ”

▶ 0:37 CONTROVERSIAL POLICY

“I think the narrative in the market right now is that we will know, we just need to get through midterms. It'll be a clearing event, and then we can kind of go back to the party. I've heard several investors say that and my concern is fine, midterms finishes. You know, right now we're kind of predicting, I think around 60% that it's going to be a Democratic sweep. We'll see if that occurs. If it i”

▶ 7:05 CONTROVERSIAL POLICY

Mentioned in this interview

Jacob Coxon: mentioned as someone with views on AI doom, though Silverman says 'however you feel'

Dario Amodei CEO and Co-Founder: mentioned as another AI thought leader with beliefs on existential risk

AWS: cited as example of a major outage last year lasting six to eight hours

Iran: cited as geopolitical risk without tangible catalyst bleeding into markets

Earlier, on the same topics

“Yeah, that's a really good question. And whenever we see those differentials in ratios being very high, I would say it makes everyone quite nervous because when you look across assets, so you take something like a simple ratio like move over VIX. Just looking at the Treasury, implied volatility is r”

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About Amy Silverman

Amy Silverman, head of derivatives strategy at RBC Capital Markets, has made several media appearances in the past two months to discuss market conditions, election risks, and volatility. In early November 2026, she said on Bloomberg Open Interest that the US midterm elections could serve as a "clearing event" for markets, citing options term structure as suggesting this, but noted that a contested election could induce volatility. She also commented on a "violent rotation" in markets, describing a "paddling duck market" where index levels appear calm but underlying stocks experience multi-standard-deviation moves, with sectors such as software and semis zigging and zagging to offset each other. Silverman has also discussed the relationship between bond and equity volatility, noting that Treasury implied volatility relative to equity implied volatility has been elevated. In October 2026, she told CNBC's Squawk Box that volatility from other asset classes would eventually "bleed into equity markets," and used a flood insurance analogy to illustrate how low-probability risks, such as existential threats from AI, may be underpriced. She also addressed the K-shaped economy in a September 2026 appearance, saying that weak consumer confidence reflects lower-income households, while high earners continue spending, which supports hard economic data and equity markets. Throughout these appearances, she has highlighted election-related risks, high dispersion among stocks, and the potential for correlation to rise as macro concerns take hold.

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