Synthetic indices explained for Deriv traders

Synthetic indices explained in one paragraph: they are the markets on Deriv that are not tied to a company, a currency or a metal. The volatility indices are the best known of them, numbered 10, 25, 50, 75 and 100, with one second versions alongside. They run all week, including the weekend, and each number tells you roughly how hard the price moves. This post covers what they are, why they never close, and how they differ from each other on the screen.

A synthetic index is a market that does not follow the news

Forex pairs and gold move because of what happens in the world. A synthetic index does not. It has no earnings report, no central bank and no opening bell. What it has is a price that ticks, a chart you can read, and the same contract types Deriv offers everywhere else on the platform: rise and fall, higher and lower, and the digit contracts.

That is why the charts look familiar. Candles form, ranges tighten and widen, runs of ticks go one way and then turn. Traders use the same tools they would use on a forex chart. What is missing is the calendar. There is no eight thirty release to sit out, and no gap on Monday morning left over from a weekend headline.

They run all week because there is no exchange to close

Forex has a weekend because the banks that trade it stop. Synthetic indices have nothing to stop. The feed keeps producing ticks on Saturday and Sunday at the same rate it does on a Tuesday, which is the single most practical reason many Deriv traders end up on them. If your free time is the weekend, these are the markets that are open when you are.

This cuts both ways. A market that is always open is a market you can always lose money in, and there is no closing bell to make you stop. Most people who trade lose money, and a market with no weekend removes one of the few natural brakes on how long you sit there. That is what the limits on an Auto Trader are for: a loss limit and a target that end the session whether or not you feel like ending it.

The number in the name is the size of the movement

The number is the clue. A higher number means a price that travels further in the same stretch of time. You can see it in a single half hour window. All of the figures below were taken from Deriv's live feed at 08:04 UTC on 26 September 2026, over the last 1000 ticks from 07:31 to 08:04 UTC.

Volatility 10 covered a range of 0.149% in that half hour. Volatility 75 covered 1.185% in the same half hour. Same clock, very different distance. That is the whole difference between the two markets in one line, and it is why a stop distance that feels sensible on Volatility 10 is nowhere near enough on Volatility 75.

Note what the numbers do not tell you. The direction over that window was small and mixed, and it was nothing to do with the index number. Volatility 75 rose 0.203% while Volatility 25 fell 0.066%. Half an hour later the signs could be the other way round. Range is a property of the market. Direction is not.

The one second versions pack the same movement into less time

Alongside each volatility index, Deriv offers a one second version. The named volatility is the same. The ticks simply arrive faster, so a chart of a given length covers a shorter stretch of real time and a trade of a given number of ticks is over sooner.

For anyone trading short contracts that matters more than it sounds. A pattern you had a minute to think about on the standard index gives you far less time on the one second version. If you are learning a market, the slower feed is the easier place to learn it.

Last digits behave differently from the price chart

The digit contracts do not care about direction at all. They look at the final digit of each quoted price. Over the same 1000 tick window, the digit shares were not flat. On Volatility 50, digit 8 appeared 12.2% of the time and digit 2 appeared 8.3%, a spread of 3.9 points. On Volatility 10 the spread between the most and least common digit was 1.9 points, the tightest of the five.

Those spreads are what a digit analyzer measures. They are a description of the window just gone, not a forecast of the next tick, and they move as the window moves. The Digit Trader reads those last digits live and shows one pick for the next tick with every card that led to it, so you can see what the read is built on before you decide anything.

How to choose between them

Match the index to the size of the account and the size of the stop you are willing to hold. The larger ranges on Volatility 75 and Volatility 100 mean a position moves against you further before it comes back, if it comes back. The smaller ranges on Volatility 10 and Volatility 25 mean less distance in both directions.

Beyond that, watch one index for a while before you trade it. Every one of these markets has its own rhythm, and no table replaces sitting with a chart. Open a demo account first, pick one index, and watch it for a week before any real money goes near it.

If you want a read on these markets while you learn them, the AI Signals screen shows one call per market with the reasoning behind it, and the decision stays with you.