Market Mood
Today's reading
What's behind the number
Each signal is scored 0–100 against its own past year: 0 is its most fearful reading, 100 its most greedy. The composite is the weighted average of the signals available today. Robust and open-data signals carry 75% of the weight; fragile ones rely on unofficial price feeds and drop out, with the rest re-weighted, if a feed fails.
The bias likely at work
Confirmation bias is seeking out and trusting information that supports what we already believe, while discounting what contradicts it.
Mixed signals make it easy, because some data always agrees with us.
Why this bias, today: The signals still split, which gives confirmation bias plenty to work with. Volatility level (83) and Safe-haven demand (82) read as extreme greed, with the VIX at 15.41, while Market breadth (23) reads as extreme fear, with only 46% of 100 large U.S. stocks above their 50-day average. Options hedging (44) sits on the fear side too, so a bull and a bear can each find a chart that agrees with them.
A question to ask yourself: What is the strongest evidence against my view, and have I really read it?
The note above is drafted with AI from the day's readings and checked automatically against the data. The bias explanation comes from a fixed, reviewed library.
Methodology
How the number is built
- Each U.S. trading morning, code collects seven signals from free public data, as of the prior close.
- Each signal is ranked against its own past 252 trading days (a percentile). Signals that rise with fear, such as the VIX and the put/call ratio, are flipped so that 0 always means fear and 100 greed.
- The composite is a fixed weighted average. Weights never change silently; any change will be dated on this page.
- If a signal is missing or fails a sanity check, it is left out and the others are re-weighted; the table above shows this. Nothing is published if two or more of the robust signals are missing or the data is stale.
- Where a data owner's terms limit redisplay, only our derived score is shown.
What the AI does, and does not do
Code computes every number. An AI model drafts the short note on the bias likely at work, choosing from a fixed, reviewed library of biases and historical examples. Automated checks reject any draft that gives advice or forecasts, uses a number not in the day's data, uses quotation marks, or names a bias outside the library.
Signals and weights
| Signal | Type | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Volatility level | Robust | 25% |
| Volatility curve | Robust | 15% |
| Options hedging | Robust | 20% |
| Market breadth | Fragile | 15% |
| Safe-haven demand | Fragile | 10% |
| News tone | Open data | 10% |
| Crowd attention | Open data | 5% |
Labels: 0–24 extreme fear · 25–44 fear · 45–55 neutral · 56–75 greed · 76–100 extreme greed.
Robust: official index data. Open data: openly licensed sources. Fragile: unofficial price feeds that can break without notice. Market breadth uses today's list of 100 large U.S. stocks for the whole past year, which slightly flatters history.
Credits: VIX and 3-month VIX © Cboe, retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Options score derived from Cboe daily market statistics. News tone: The GDELT Project. Page views: Wikimedia Foundation (CC0). Breadth and safe-haven figures are our own calculations from daily closing prices. Data owners do not endorse this page.
Sentiment indicators describe mood, not value. They can stay extreme for a long time and are not a timing tool.
Coming later: a weekly bias explainer, and a look back at the mood on notable past dates.