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Fear & Greed Index

A composite of volatility, momentum, social volume, and surveys. Read as a contrarian crowd-positioning signal, not a price prediction - it describes current sentiment, it does not forecast direction.

Fear & Greed Index

What it measures

A composite index (0-100) built from volatility, momentum, social volume, and survey data - a snapshot of aggregate market sentiment.

Formula

A third-party composite (alternative.me) - this project ingests the published value directly rather than reconstructing its inputs.

Normal range

0-25 "Extreme Fear", 25-45 "Fear", 45-55 "Neutral", 55-75 "Greed", 75-100 "Extreme Greed".

How it fails

It describes current sentiment, it does not forecast direction - extreme readings can persist for extended stretches before (or without) any reversal, and treating a single day's reading as a timing signal has been wrong before.

Related metrics

MVRV, Realized Volatility

Bull read

Extreme Fear has historically been a contrarian zone where local bottoms have formed.

Bear read

Extreme Greed has historically been a contrarian zone where local tops have formed - but sentiment can stay euphoric for a long stretch before any pullback.

Worked example

On this project's own ingested data, the highest reading on record is 95 on 2019-06-26T00:00:00, and the lowest is 5 on 2019-08-22T00:00:00 - computed from ingested history, not asserted from memory.

Full metric page →