Is the market fearful or greedy right now?
The Fear & Greed Index gauges the mood driving US stocks — from Extreme Fear to Extreme Greed. Sentiment is the tide this engine trades against: crowded greed is the crowded-long fuel it looks to fade, and extreme fear is when short-covering squeezes bite hardest.
Wall Street's “fear gauge” — expected 30-day volatility. Low VIX = complacency; spikes = panic.
Risk-On Environment. Three conditions hold simultaneously: F&G in greed territory, insider score not in sell-pressure, and 4-week liquidity not contracting. The regime ends when any one flips. The most common shift is insider activity turning bearish or liquidity rolling over — sentiment usually moves last.
VIX 16.1 / MA20 17.8
SPY 748 / MA125 704
VIX/VIX3M 0.85
SPY-TLT +1.2%
HYG-LQD +0.4%
How the S&P 500 has performed after readings in each zone. Mean reversion is the whole thesis — extremes rarely last.
| Zone | Fwd return (avg) | Win rate | Samples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extreme Fear (0–20) | +4.3% | 83% | 29 |
| Fear (21–40) | +1.9% | 70% | 114 |
| Neutral (41–60) | +1.3% | 72% | 256 |
| Greed (61–80)← you are here | +1.0% | 69% | 154 |
| Extreme Greed (81–100) | +0.4% | 71% | 7 |
Forward window ≈ 1 month. Past behavior of a sentiment zone is not a prediction — it's context for the setups the engine scores.
Fear & Greed and VIX readings are aggregated from public market data and refreshed roughly every 10 minutes. Sentiment measures crowd positioning, not fair value — extremes are exactly the conditions the engine studies. Educational data, not investment advice.