Researchers in Zurich, working on their own scale for currency market crashes, found their index seemed to predict storms, albeit only over a short time-horizon. In the week of October 5–9, 1998, dollar/yen rates gyrated an extraordinary 15 percent. A few hours before the worst of the crisis, the researchers found, their index had soared from a level below 3 to one above 10. It “gave an early warning that the situation was very unstable,” they reported.
