Social Intelligence, in the fast-evolving field of behavioural finance, is used by professionals in trading & investing systems to decode the crowd’s behaviour and predict market shifts.
Professional and institutional extreme greed are dominating the markets, while retail investor fears are keeping sentiment indices tamed, struggling to find a market-wide consensus. Without consensus, there are no strong signals, reflecting mid-cycle behaviours rather than extremes, tops or bottoms. Without retail participation, liquidity remains thin, and a forced sell-off could be devastating. What drives retail attention? Market momentum and its subsequent domination of social and mainstream media. This is not what the average Joe is seeing.
Economic outlook worsens as PMI is expected to be contractionary for April in the UK and EU, while consumer social mood continues lower yet again!
Global yields took over the narrative, as I suggested a couple of weeks ago. The inattention was concerning, considering ‘they’ used lower yields in Great Britain to justify giving Liz Truss the sack in 2025. National debts will spiral out of control if yields continue higher, so something has to give with Global conflicts and fiscal policy. The FED needs to reverse the US10Y rising yield, which sets the benchmark for all borrowing rates, and they have one tool left: Yield Curve Control. Print lots and lots of money and buy the bonds. This could drive the next wave of asset inflation.
Midterm worries are rising, and TedPillows makes an interesting point. Take a look at the S&P500 returns from May to October during midterm years. Will political uncertainty repeat itself in 2026? Probability significantly suggests we should all be selling in May this year.
Little has changed since Monday. Bitcoin sentiment is on the cusp of fear and neutral. This reset, with minimal retracement in price, is exactly what we want to see for confidence in a bullish continuation.
Stocks have remained in greed for 5 weeks. Contrary to the last 19months ’ behaviour, where stocks hit it and rapidly retraced. If this is what people are expecting, then it’s likely it will no longer repeat.
Rational retail sentiment volatility widens
Deviating from retail and professional investor greed, a huge number of bullish rational investors flipped bearish, as negativity bias takes control. Nothing has changed in the markets; in fact, they are at all-time highs again. These expectations of a bearish top, which do not reflect reality, will continue to be punished.
Bull markets are built on this doubt, not certainty
UK and Eurozone PMI have entered a contractionary phase in April with readings <50. However, this could just be a spike down, and confirmation of a trend lower is needed in next month’s output to raise real concerns.
UK consumer sentiment continues its trend down in all financial indices. Spending is leading the low social mood due to inflation worries, and the labour market, which was holding the mood up, saw a significant drop. Household finances and outlook have tumbled to significant lows.
Despite rising global yields and inflation, US rates have a 96.8% of holding steady, and a 3.2% chance of a cut, with no chance of an increase.
Interestingly, the ECB rates have an 81% chance of increasing rates and 19% holding steady.
Global 10Y & 30Y yields continue their uptrend into 2008-2011 levels, further adding pressure to housing markets and debt refinancing as borrowing costs surge. With economic contraction, the stage could now be set to discuss recession potential.
Retail investing attention is falling off a cliff to significant lows, as they focus on spending habits and worry about inflation and rising debt yields.
While retail participation is down 30%, new agents are joining the market with expectations of trading OIL, Bitcoin and Crypto instead of investing; damaging for welfare and future expectations. The good news is that the preference to invest in stocks is dominating the desire to trade them.
According to Google Trends, consumers are actively prioritising comfort, wellness, and “pick-me-up” purchases, reflecting depression, which falls in line with Costco’s purchase habits during these times of low social mood.
Institutions remain in extreme greed, which continued to accelerate to yet another fresh high, as bearish positioning decreased further, coupled with very low SPY volume. Pros have no interest in selling at these levels, comfortable in their bullish outlook. These 2 extreme signals historically average 10% returns over the following year, but we’ve already seen a 17% move. This flips them into contrarian signals for a market top. Sell in May and go away?
VIX Volatility Index has not changed, sitting comfortably low, and volatility has subsided. Investors' concern for the IRAN conflict narrative has passed. Volatility has cooled down, right in time for the S&P500 to be in price discovery.
What is really going on with sentiment and attention? I dive deeper with the nuanced social intelligence below to uncover a different story.
Whether you’re a professional, individual, trader or investor, this institutional-grade Social Intelligence analytics delivers high-conviction alpha, sharp contrarian signals and forward-thinking insights to level-up your decisions, forming an essential edge in modern trading/investment systems in the fast-evolving field of behavioural finance.
Traditional sentiment indicators, like the fear and greed index, are lagged and derived from market positioning and price movement- this is not real sentiment. My natural language processing extracts True Sentiment and Social Attention metrics, helping you spot market shifts and events before the crowd with greater accuracy — this is where institutional alpha happens.
Subscribers receive exclusive access to processed Social Intelligence Level 2 Market analysis. Adding these to your screening arsenal can significantly boost your accuracy and timing when making entry/exit investment decisions, while simultaneously working as a signal filter to help you sidestep costly fake-outs in trading.
This proprietary research is for personal and professional use only. It must not be redistributed in any form, and the author must be credited when quoted. This is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice.
Social Attention (Pros+retail) ticked slightly up across social media as everyone is discussing fresh lows in Bitcoin with an extremely negative outlook. Retail attention is completely gone, now at all-time lows. The bullish divergence remains; attention is lower, while prices are higher, signalling a continued bull run.
True Sentiment (Natural language processing) is as low as it can go, leaping from extreme bullish to bearish after the price turned back around. My previous analysis is playing out; extreme bullish readings are giving way to a short-term reversal in price, but sentiment is so frustrated with the lack of momentum and teased hope that negativity is exponential and volatility of sentiment is wild.
Recent bottom signal stats: AVG max upside 94.6% | AVG max downside -9.9%
Retail’s last moment of attention was panic during the drop to $66k, with a small spike of hope on the first pump to $76k, before being totally exhausted and leaving.
Social Attention (Pros+retail) continues its fall to neutral from significantly hyped levels, after the strong rally. Apple is still at all-time high as attention fades. Retail attention spiked neutral, but has since trended back down to inattention, setting the stage for higher prices.
True Sentiment (Natural language processing) is also coming down from extreme bullish, reflecting the AAII results of rational investors turning extremely bearish. Apple remains in greed.
Top signal stats: AVG max upside 13.2% | AVG max downside -18.1%
Social Attention (Pros+retail) is volatile, quickly spiking and retracing to inattentive. Retail attention has remained at significantly low levels.
True Sentiment (Natural language processing) has dropped to the greed threshold from the dedicated FinFluencers who remain, showing a declining outlook across social media chatter as prices disappoints.
Mixed signals, but inattention dominates as the signal here. I am expecting a decent rally in the near future.
Disclaimer: The material presented herein is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, trading, tax or accounting advice. Maddox Metrics is a personal website for the author to share his work and ideas. The author, newsletter or website is not registered as financial advice, financial advisor, money manager or money management of any kind. All opinions, trade ideas, price targets and risk parameters reflect personal views at the time of publication and are subject to change without notice.
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