What is the Fear & Greed Index?
The Fear & Greed Index measures the dominant emotion driving a market — fear or greed — on a scale from 0 (Extreme Fear) to 100 (Extreme Greed). It is built on the idea that excessive fear drives prices below fair value, while excessive greed pushes them above it. Many investors therefore treat extreme readings as contrarian signals.
This page covers five markets: US stocks (S&P 500), A-shares (CSI 300), Hong Kong (Hang Seng Index), Japan (Nikkei 225) and crypto.
How each market's index is calculated
Crypto uses the official daily Fear & Greed Index from alternative.me, which aggregates volatility, market momentum, social media, Bitcoin dominance, Google Trends and surveys into a 0–100 score.
There is no single standard public index for these markets, so we compute our own on the server from daily OHLC data (Eastmoney).
US stocks (S&P 500) — CNN 7-factor. We replicate CNN's methodology: seven sub-indicators, each normalized to 0–100, then averaged with equal weight. The seven are price momentum (vs 125-day MA), price strength (52-week range), breadth (up/down days), put/call (volatility proxy), junk-bond demand (drawdown proxy), market volatility (VIX vs its 50-day MA when reachable, otherwise a volatility proxy), and safe-haven demand (price-slope proxy). Factors whose real data (options, bond spreads, breadth, VIX) is not freely reachable from our server use a transparent price-based proxy and are labelled as such.
A-shares, Hong Kong, Japan — Price 3-factor. These use a simpler, transparent three-component model:
- Momentum (40%) — where the closing price sits inside its 60-day high-low range. Near the top of the range = greed; near the bottom = fear. (0–100)
- Volatility (30%) — the 20-day realized volatility (annualized), scored by its percentile within the trailing one year, then inverted: the higher today's volatility ranks, the more fear it contributes. (0–100)
- Drawdown (30%) — today's close as a percentage of the 1-year high. Close to the high = greed; far below = fear. (0–100)
The final index for these three is the weighted average: 0.4 × Momentum + 0.3 × Volatility + 0.3 × Drawdown, rounded to an integer on the 0–100 scale.
The CNN stock market version (reference)
The original index was created by CNN Money for the U.S. stock market. It averages seven equally weighted indicators:
- Stock price momentum — the S&P 500 versus its 125-day moving average.
- Stock price strength — the number of NYSE stocks hitting 52-week highs versus 52-week lows.
- Stock price breadth — trading volume in advancing stocks versus declining stocks.
- Put/call ratio — the volume of bearish put options versus bullish call options.
- Market volatility — the VIX compared with its 50-day moving average.
- Safe haven demand — the difference in returns between stocks and Treasury bonds over 20 trading days.
- Junk bond demand — the yield spread between junk bonds and investment-grade bonds.
Each indicator is scored against its historical range from 0 to 100, and the final index is the simple average of the seven scores. Our US index follows this seven-factor structure; the A-share/HK/Japan indices use the simpler three-factor model above because the breadth, options and bond data behind CNN's version are not freely available for those markets.
How to read the index
- 0–24 Extreme Fear: investors are panic selling; the market may be undervalued — historically often a good entry zone.
- 25–44 Fear: pessimism dominates.
- 45–55 Neutral: balanced sentiment.
- 56–75 Greed: optimism dominates.
- 76–100 Extreme Greed: euphoria; the market may be overvalued — a period to be cautious about corrections.
Remember that the index is a sentiment thermometer, not a prediction. Extreme readings can persist for weeks or months, so it should be combined with other analysis rather than used alone.