--- title: "Fear & Greed Index: Crypto" description: "The Fear & Greed Index is a 0-100 score of crypto and stock market sentiment, automatically refreshed, with a 1-year trend chart and a plain-English guide." canonical: https://www.getswoopr.com/fear-greed/ source: "Swoopr Investment: https://www.getswoopr.com" --- Free · Automatically Refreshed · No Account Required # Fear & Greed Index for Crypto & Stocks Investment Education, Research & Tools for Smarter Decisions. A 0-100 sentiment score for crypto and the stock market, automatically refreshed, each with its own 1-year trend, so you can see not just where sentiment stands today, but where it's been heading. Search guides, glossary terms, tools and answers Search See the gauges Request full access ## Direct Answer The Swoopr Fear & Greed page tracks market sentiment on a 0-100 scale for crypto and stocks. A low score represents unusually defensive or fearful conditions; a high score represents unusually optimistic or greedy conditions. The score is a descriptive market-state indicator, not a buy or sell signal. The interface may refresh automatically while the underlying quote or market series is delayed, so use the displayed source and data-as-of time when interpreting the reading. ### Key Takeaways - Fear & Greed is a **sentiment measure**, not a return forecast. - Crypto and stock sentiment are separate because their markets, participants, trading hours and catalysts differ. - An extreme reading can remain extreme; "contrarian" does not mean "immediately reverse." - Direction matters: a score moving out of fear can describe a different environment from a score falling into fear even when both print the same number. - The stock gauge is **Swoopr Investment's own methodology**, not CNN's Fear & Greed Index. - "Automatically refreshed" describes the interface. It does not mean every underlying market field is exchange-real-time. - Use sentiment with price structure, volatility, liquidity, fundamentals and your research process rather than as a stand-alone decision rule. ## Today's Sentiment Click for detail Crypto sentiment from [Alternative.me](https://alternative.me/crypto/fear-and-greed-index/). Data may be delayed. [View full Fear & Greed page](https://www.getswoopr.com/fear-greed/) or [read the methodology](https://www.getswoopr.com/fear-greed/#cryptoGaugeHeading). Click for detail Stock sentiment is Swoopr Investment's own proxy using VIX level and S&P 500 momentum relative to its 125-day average. Data may be delayed. [View full Fear & Greed page](https://www.getswoopr.com/fear-greed/) or [read the methodology](https://www.getswoopr.com/fear-greed/#stockGaugeHeading). Sentiment scores are informational only and are not investment advice. Past sentiment does not predict future price moves. ## Today's Volatility Volatility data is informational only. Past volatility does not predict future volatility or price moves. ## What Is the Fear & Greed Index? The Fear & Greed Index compresses the mood of an entire market into a single number from 0 to 100. It exists because prices alone don't tell you whether a move is driven by calm, rational buying and selling, or by panic and euphoria. Sentiment tends to run in cycles: fear breeds more selling, and greed breeds more buying, often well past the point that the underlying fundamentals justify. A score near 0 is **Extreme Fear**, the market is jumpy, volatility is elevated, and investors are pulling back or selling into strength. A score near 100 is **Extreme Greed**, investors are buying aggressively, often chasing recent gains. Everything in between moves through Fear, Neutral, and Greed as sentiment shifts. Swoopr Investment tracks two separate gauges, one for crypto, one for the broader stock market, because the two markets are driven by different participants, different news cycles, and different risk appetites. It's common for crypto sentiment and stock sentiment to disagree, sometimes sharply. ## How Traders Use It The classic use of a sentiment gauge like this is as a contrarian signal: extremes tend to be where crowds are most likely to be wrong. When a market sits in Extreme Fear, prices have often already priced in a lot of bad news, and further downside can be limited, though fear can also persist or deepen, so a low score is a prompt to look closer, not a buy signal on its own. When a market sits in Extreme Greed, it's worth asking whether the move has run ahead of the fundamentals. The 1-year trend line on each gauge matters as much as the current number. A score climbing out of Extreme Fear tells a different story than one sliding into it, even if today's reading looks similar. Watching the direction, not just the level, is usually more useful than a single snapshot. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the Fear & Greed Index? A 0-100 score summarizing overall market sentiment. Near 0 is Extreme Fear, investors selling and pulling back. Near 100 is Extreme Greed, investors buying aggressively and chasing gains. The middle of the range is Neutral. ### What does a low score mean? A score of 0-25 (Extreme Fear) means sentiment has turned sharply negative, often alongside rising volatility and falling prices. Extreme fear has sometimes preceded recoveries historically, since prices can overshoot to the downside, but it's not a guarantee of a bounce. ### What does a high score mean? A score of 76-100 (Extreme Greed) means sentiment has turned sharply positive, often alongside strong recent gains. It can signal an asset has become overextended and more vulnerable to a pullback, though a drop isn't guaranteed to follow. ### Is crypto sentiment the same as stock market sentiment? No. Crypto and stocks often move on different news cycles and different investor bases, so their scores can and do diverge, crypto can sit in Extreme Fear while stocks sit in Greed, or the reverse. That's why Swoopr Investment tracks them as two separate gauges. ### How often does it update? The page checks for new data about every 15 minutes, but the crypto score from Alternative.me is published once a day and the stock gauge uses daily market data, so the scores change less often than the page refreshes. ### Is this the same as CNN's Fear & Greed Index? No. The stock gauge here is Swoopr Investment's own index, built from market volatility and momentum signals. It's directionally similar in spirit to other well-known fear & greed gauges but isn't affiliated with or reproducing any other publisher's proprietary methodology. CNN Business's own stock market index, for comparison, draws on seven factors: stock price momentum, market volatility (the VIX), put/call ratios, junk bond demand, and safe-haven flows, among others. ### Where can I see more free market data from Swoopr Investment? The [free, automatically refreshed ticker](https://www.getswoopr.com/ticker/) covers indexes, mega-cap stocks, and top crypto assets with price changes and trend sparklines, no account required, same as this page. ## What Is a Fear & Greed Index? A fear-and-greed index is a compact way to describe whether market behavior looks unusually defensive, neutral or optimistic. The idea is not that emotion can be measured perfectly. It is that several observable market variables (such as volatility, momentum, demand and risk appetite) can be combined or summarized to describe the environment investors are responding to. A 0-100 scale is easy to read: | Range | Label | Plain-English interpretation | | --- | --- | --- | | 0-25 | Extreme Fear | Risk appetite is unusually weak or defensive. | | 26-45 | Fear | Caution is elevated relative to more neutral conditions. | | 46-55 | Neutral | Sentiment is closer to the middle of its range. | | 56-75 | Greed | Risk appetite is stronger and optimism is elevated. | | 76-100 | Extreme Greed | Optimism or risk-taking is unusually elevated. | These labels describe a market condition. They do not establish that prices are cheap, expensive, about to reverse, or likely to move by a specific amount. A market can stay fearful through a prolonged decline. It can remain greedy through a long bull market. An extreme score is therefore better treated as a research prompt than a timing rule. ## Why Swoopr Tracks Crypto and Stocks Separately Crypto and stocks can respond to the same broad forces (liquidity, interest rates, risk appetite, and major macroeconomic events), but they are not one market. Crypto trades continuously across global venues. Market structure, leverage, custody, liquidation mechanics, token-specific events and weekend trading can affect sentiment in ways that have no direct stock-market equivalent. U.S. stocks trade through defined sessions and auctions, sit inside a regulated securities-market structure, and are influenced by corporate earnings, economic releases, rates, index flows and volatility markets. Because those systems differ, combining them into one universal fear-and-greed number would hide useful information. A crypto market in Extreme Fear can coexist with a stock market in Neutral or Greed. That divergence can itself be worth investigating. ## How the Stock Fear & Greed Gauge Works The stock gauge on Swoopr Investment is a **Swoopr methodology**, not a reproduction of another publisher's proprietary index. The current proxy combines two broad inputs: 1. **Market volatility**, represented by the VIX level. 2. **Market momentum**, represented by the S&P 500 relative to its 125-day average. Volatility provides information about the price of short-term protection and uncertainty embedded in S&P 500 options. Momentum provides information about whether the broad stock market is trading above or below an intermediate-term trend reference. The exact implementation is documented in the methodology component beside the gauge, including source series, transformation or normalization, weights, score range, missing-data behavior, calculation version, data-as-of time, update frequency, and what the score does not mean. ## How the Crypto Gauge Works The crypto sentiment score displayed by Swoopr uses an external sentiment source. The interface names that source (Alternative.me) rather than presenting the number as if Swoopr originated it. When Swoopr adds supporting crypto market information (such as volume, price, or change), the source and timing of those fields are labeled separately. A sentiment series and a market-data feed may have different update schedules and should not share one ambiguous "live" label. The important provenance questions are: Who produced the sentiment score? Which timestamp belongs to the score? Who supplied the supporting market data? How delayed is that data? Did Swoopr transform the source value? Is the displayed classification Swoopr's mapping or the source provider's mapping? ## What Does Extreme Fear Mean? Extreme Fear means the sentiment measure has reached the low end of its observed scale. That usually coincides with some combination of defensive positioning, falling prices, elevated volatility, weak momentum or negative narrative. It does **not** mean the market has reached its final low, an asset is fundamentally undervalued, a rebound must begin soon, or that a contrarian trade has positive expected value after costs. Fear can persist when new information continues to worsen. During a genuine crisis, prices can decline after sentiment has already become extremely negative. A low reading is therefore a reason to ask what is driving the fear and what evidence would indicate improvement. ## What Does Extreme Greed Mean? Extreme Greed means the sentiment measure has reached the high end of its scale. It often appears when recent returns are strong, volatility is subdued, speculative participation is elevated or investors are willing to accept more risk. It does **not** mean the market is necessarily overvalued, a correction is imminent, strong momentum must reverse, or that risk can be ignored because recent returns are strong. Bull markets can remain optimistic for long periods. Momentum itself can persist. An extreme-greed reading is therefore more useful as a prompt to check assumptions than as a reason to bet against the trend. ## Level Versus Direction A single score is a snapshot. The path into that score can contain more information. Consider two hypothetical readings of 30: Market A fell from 70 to 30 in ten sessions; Market B rose from 10 to 30 over the same period. Both are classified as fearful, but they describe different transitions: Market A shows rapid deterioration while Market B shows an improvement from a much more stressed starting point. That is why the 1-year history remains part of the page. The trend helps readers distinguish entering fear, remaining in fear, recovering from fear, entering greed, remaining in greed, and falling from greed. None of those paths guarantees the next move, but they describe the current market regime more clearly than a single point. ## How Investors Can Use Sentiment Without Turning It Into a Signal A disciplined use of sentiment starts with a question, not a trade. ### Use it as context Sentiment can help explain the environment surrounding another piece of analysis. A valuation result reached during panic may be worth stress-testing against unusually high volatility. A momentum strategy entered during euphoric conditions may need a different drawdown expectation than one entered after a long washout. ### Compare sentiment with price and volatility Ask whether the indicators agree. Price rising with greed rising can describe trend continuation. Price rising with sentiment falling can describe weakening enthusiasm. Price falling with fear rising can describe accelerating stress. Price stabilizing with fear remaining extreme can describe a market where price and sentiment are beginning to diverge. These are descriptions, not automatic trades. ### Define what would falsify your interpretation If your thesis is "sentiment is recovering," decide what evidence would show that the recovery failed. A process without an invalidation condition easily turns into storytelling. ### Keep position sizing separate Even a strong research conclusion does not answer how much capital to risk. Use a [position-size or portfolio-risk process](https://www.getswoopr.com/learn/position-sizing-risk-per-trade/) rather than letting a sentiment score determine exposure. ### Review after the fact Record the score, the data-as-of time, the thesis and the outcome. This lets you test whether sentiment actually added value to your process instead of remembering only the dramatic examples. ## Common Mistakes Treating Extreme Fear as "cheap" Sentiment and valuation are different variables. A fearful market can still contain expensive assets, and a cheap asset can remain unpopular for good reasons. Treating Extreme Greed as a short signal Strong momentum can persist. Betting against a trend requires its own research, risk controls and time horizon. Ignoring data timing An automatically refreshed dashboard can still use delayed inputs. Always compare the displayed timestamp with the event or market session you are analyzing. Comparing different methodologies as if the scores were identical Two fear-and-greed indexes may use different factors, weights and normalization. A 70 on one methodology is not necessarily equivalent to a 70 on another. Using the score without a decision process An indicator is most useful when it fits inside a repeatable research framework. Without one, sentiment becomes another number that can be used to justify whatever conclusion the reader already preferred. ## Data Timing and Freshness Swoopr distinguishes between **interface refresh frequency** and **source-data timeliness**. A page can refresh every few minutes while its underlying quote is delayed. Those are different facts. Each market-data component shows the provider, data-as-of timestamp, timeliness classification (real-time, delayed, end-of-day, estimated or unavailable), last successful retrieval, and fallback state if the provider is unavailable. If the interface cannot establish the timeliness of a field, it labels the timing **unknown** rather than implying it is real-time. A build timestamp is not a substitute for a data timestamp. ## Related Swoopr Resources - [Market Sentiment](https://www.getswoopr.com/market-sentiment/) - [Technical Analysis](https://www.getswoopr.com/technical-analysis/) - [VIX and Market Volatility](https://www.getswoopr.com/learn/technical-analysis/indicators/vix/) - [Position Sizing](https://www.getswoopr.com/learn/position-sizing-risk-per-trade/) - [Risk Management](https://www.getswoopr.com/risk-management/) - [Backtesting Methodology](https://www.getswoopr.com/stocks/backtesting/) - [Research Workbench](https://www.getswoopr.com/research/workbench/) - [Data & Methodology](https://www.getswoopr.com/legal/data-methodology/) - [Investment & Trading Risk Disclosure](https://www.getswoopr.com/legal/risk-disclosure/) ## References 1. [cdn.cboe.com/resources/indices/Volatility_Index_Methodology_Cboe_Volatility_Index.pdf](https://cdn.cboe.com/resources/indices/Volatility_Index_Methodology_Cboe_Volatility_Index.pdf) 2. [S&P Dow Jones Indices: S&P 500 index methodology](https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/equity/sp-500/) 3. [Alternative.me: Crypto Fear & Greed Index source and methodology](https://alternative.me/crypto/fear-and-greed-index/) 4. [CoinGecko: crypto market data](https://www.coingecko.com/) 5. [Swoopr Investment: Data, Rankings & AI Methodology Disclosure](https://www.getswoopr.com/legal/data-methodology/) 6. [Swoopr Investment: Investment & Trading Risk Disclosure](https://www.getswoopr.com/legal/risk-disclosure/)