SentimenTrader defines sentiment as the emotional tone driving investor behavior — the collective attitude toward risk that influences buying and selling decisions. Market sentiment is shaped by four main factors: fundamentals, technicals, media narratives, and the broader market environment.
To quantify sentiment, analysts combine five measurement approaches from behavioral finance research:
These inputs power proprietary indicators such as the Smart Money/Dumb Money Confidence Spread, Optix Sentiment Models, and Risk-On/Risk-Off Indexes, updated daily to track when optimism or fear reaches historically extreme levels.
Each SentimenTrader research report follows a clear, five-part framework designed to transform complex market data into concise, actionable insight:
When a report includes a backtested setup, it contains a direct link to the exact configuration used by our analysts. Readers can open the backtest instantly in the SentimenTrader Backtest Engine, review the criteria, modify settings such as entry and exit rules, and save or deploy it as a live signal with alerts.
Behind this structure lies our research method — data modeling, behavioral finance, and historical pattern analysis — quantifying how today’s sentiment and breadth conditions compare with similar historical periods. Each report is typically under 10 pages, balancing clarity, precision, and actionable transparency.
Yes. When a research report includes a backtest setup, a direct link inside the report opens the exact configuration our analysts used. With one click, you can load, review, and modify it — no manual setup required.
From there, you can:
These actions are powered by the SentimenTrader Backtest Engine — a proprietary, no-coding required environment that lets you design and optimize strategies across more than 20,000 sentiment, technical, and macro indicators.
You can test ideas as far back as historical data exists, compare results with major indexes, and refine them for any asset class, from equities and ETFs to bonds, commodities, and crypto.
This seamless process — read → open → customize → deploy → monitor — allows traders to move from research insight to execution within minutes, turning historical data into actionable, real-time strategy.
If a research idea inspires you but does not have a linked backtest, you can simply submit the idea’s conditions, and our support team will help create the custom backtest for you.
Building on the above, every backtested setup from a research report can become a live, actionable signal. After opening the linked backtest, you can modify its rules, save it, and add it to My Signal to track it in real time with email alerts.
Beyond the setups found in reports, traders can also discover trading ideas through:
All signals — from reports, strategies, or custom ideas — can be monitored automatically with alerts, ensuring you never miss an opportunity identified by your system.
Save & Reload Your Custom Chart Layouts: You can now save complete chart layouts and reload them anytime. Each layout preserves your tickers, indicators, display styles (candlestick, bar, or line), timeframe (daily, weekly, monthly), and theme (light or dark), so you can instantly return to your preferred setup without rebuilding from scratch.
Trend Insight: With one click, our machine analyzes the past 63 trading days and automatically draws key highs, lows, support, and resistance levels. This saves time and provides quick, data-driven insights into where markets may face pressure or find support.
We’ve made strategy testing more flexible with the User Defined Dates feature in Backtest Engine. Run backtests on specific dates you define, rather than relying only on preset market conditions. Simply upload a CSV file with your chosen dates, and each date will be treated as a trading signal for your strategy. This enables you to test strategies around key events, such as earnings reports, economic data releases, or any other dates critical to your trading decisions. It helps you customize backtests to better align with your trading goals and improve the precision of your strategy testing.
Date Range Correlation
This newly added feature allows you to instantly compare trend similarity between two stocks across custom timeframes and uncover how price patterns align in different market conditions.
Common Pattern
We’ve made it easier to identify and act on classic technical setups across the Correlation Pattern Match tool, My Screen, and My Signal. With this new feature, there’s no need to manually define pattern lengths or dates. Simply choose from 8 widely used chart patterns such as Head and Shoulders, Double Top, Double Bottom, and Channels, and view a thumbnail illustration next to each pattern for quick reference.
The new "Add Ticker" feature in Trend Score > My Favorites makes it easier than ever to build your Trend Score watchlist. Instead of searching and adding tickers one by one, you can now paste a comma-separated list (like “AAPL, SPX, SPY”) with up to 30 tickers at a time and save them with a single click. This update replaces the old scroll and click method, streamlining the process and reducing manual effort when tracking multiple tickers.
The new Indicator Resample feature included in My Indicator lets you convert long-term SentimenTrader indicators (such as monthly or weekly sentiment or macro models) into faster time frames like weekly or daily.
This allows you to apply these long-term signals in shorter-term strategies, so you can now combine them with technical indicators (like RSI or moving averages) in the same backtest or trading rule. For example, you can test ideas like "enter when sentiment turns bullish and RSI is oversold", something that wasn’t possible before. Whether you're a long-term investor looking for quicker entry signals or a short-term trader seeking broader context, this update gives you much more flexibility and control in strategy design and testing.
The Symbol Correlation Tool helps you quickly understand how different assets move in relation to one another, supporting the same broad asset universe as the Correlation Pattern Match Tool—including the full Russell 3000 universe of stocks, ETFs, indexes, commodities, and more. By selecting a Designated Ticker and up to five Comparison Tickers, you can generate a correlation matrix and a rolling time-series correlation chart. The chart displays how correlations evolve over a customizable time frame, helping you detect patterns, monitor relationship shifts, and make more informed decisions.
The Asset Correlation Tool offers a comprehensive view of how major ETFs across stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, and more move in relation to one another. Using a heatmap with customizable date ranges, it highlights correlation strengths—where darker blue tones reflect higher positive correlations. In addition to correlation values, the tool presents annualized returns and daily, monthly, and annualized standard deviations to help you evaluate performance and volatility.
10 New Sentiment Indicators:
# of Positive Reports (2-Month Lookback) & # of Negative Reports (2-Month Lookback): Track the number of bullish or bearish reports published by SentimenTrader analysts over the past two months, reflecting internal sentiment trends.
High-Yield Credit Spread Weekly Model: Evaluates credit market risk by analyzing short- and long-term spread trends, signaling broader risk appetite conditions.
Combined Credit Spread Model: Merges the High-Yield Credit Spread Weekly Model with the CDX Index Model to provide a streamlined view of credit market sentiment and potential equity impact.
Other Indicators Added
S&P 1500 Trend Score (Average)
S&P 500 Trend Score (Average)
Eurozone Economic Surprise Index
China Economic Surprise Index
United Kingdom Economic Surprise Index
Global Economic Surprise Index
SPX 1-Year Sharp Ratio 6-Month SMA: This indicator smooths the 1-year Sharpe Ratio of the S&P 500 using a 6-month moving average to provide a clearer view of market stability and risk-adjusted returns.
January Model: The January Model assigns a score (0–7) based on the S&P 500’s performance in key January periods, helping investors gauge early-year market conditions. This indicator was developed based on our senior research analyst Jay Kaeppel's Feb 3 report "Does January matter?"
January Model Signal: A simplified version of the January Model, this signal outputs either 1 (favorable) or 0 (unfavorable) to indicate whether market conditions are supportive of stock gains.
My Signal Feature: We’ve introduced the My Signal feature on our proprietary Backtest Engine! Now, you can automatically monitor and track your custom trading strategies, and set email alerts for triggered signals. It supports all trading styles, with daily, weekly, and monthly timeframes, along with a wide range of symbols, including all Russell 3000 stocks, indexes, ETFs, and a curated selection of cryptocurrencies.
New Actionable Strategy: We’ve added a new strategy—Vanguard Technology ETF vs. S&P 500 Relative Ratio Rank System—to our actionable trading strategies, bringing the total to 50.
4 New Sentiment Indicators:
NASDAQ Titanicburg: Tailored for the tech-heavy NASDAQ market, this indicator helps users monitor sentiment and identify trend shifts specific to technology-focused stocks.
NYSE Titanicburg: Designed for the broader NYSE market, this indicator helps users evaluate overall market sentiment and health.
TNX Range %: This indicator helps users assess the broader economic environment. It provides valuable insights into interest rate trends and their impact on market strength, enabling traders to adjust strategies accordingly.
Market Environment Composite: This indicator was developed based on our senior analyst Jason Goepfert's January 23 research note, "The market environment has flipped to healthy...but precariously." It combines eight key metrics and tracks various aspects of market behavior, such as stock price movements, breadth, and market internals, helping investors assess overall market health.
2 New Signals Added to Smart Stock Scanner: We added two new signals—Trend Score Breakout and Trend Score Breakdown—to the Smart Stock Scanner, increasing the total number of signals to 36. These additions give users more options to assess and backtest their risk and reward scenarios.
We've introduced the My Signal feature on our proprietary Backtest Engine! Now, you can automatically monitor and track your custom trading strategies, and set email alerts for triggered signals. It supports all trading styles, with daily, weekly, and monthly timeframes, along with a wide range of symbols, including all Russell 3000 stocks, indexes, ETFs, and a curated selection of cryptocurrencies.
As we close out 2024, we're excited to reflect on a year of growth and innovation at SentimenTrader. Over the past year, we rolled out several new features designed to elevate your research and trading experience. Be sure to check out our 2024 highlights video for a closer look at what we've accomplished.
A New Filter Added to Smart Stock Scanner: SentimenTrader has introduced a powerful new filter in the Smart Stock Scanner to tailor your stock research and selection process.With just a few simple settings, you can now filter stocks based on your risk and return preferences, signals, individual stock performance metrics, and more! This filter helps you quickly identify stocks that align with your investment preferences, goals, and risk tolerance, streamlining your stock selection process.
2 New Conditions and EMA Support Added to Proprietary Backtest Engine: We’ve expanded our Backtest Engine with two additional conditions—Consecutive Number of Days Above and Consecutive Number of Days Below—bringing the total to 16 conditions. These new conditions allow you to capture trend persistence more effectively, helping you identify sustained market movements and refine your strategies. Additionally, the Sentiment Indicator now supports the Exponential Moving Average (EMA) alongside the Simple Moving Average (SMA), offering greater flexibility in analyzing trends.
The Proprietary Absolute and Relative Trend Score Indicators: Our Absolute and Relative Trend Score Indicators for stocks and ETFs in the S&P 1500, S&P 500, and Nasdaq 100 allow users to search and rank stocks, ETFs, and other assets based on trend scores and week-over-week changes. This powerful feature helps you identify which assets are strengthening or weakening, supporting more informed investment choices from a single view.
Other New and Updated Indicators:
New Economic Indicator – Equity Yield Advantage Ratio (EYAR): This indicator helps investors gauge whether stocks offer a more favorable return potential compared to bonds and evaluate market trends.
Updated Sentiment Indicator – Risk On / Off Indicator: We’ve added two lines to the chart, allowing users to more intuitively visualize the market's risk state.
New Trading Signals Feature in Backtest Engine: To provide more actionable and easy-to-follow trading insights for our retail investor subscribers, we’ve added new trading signals for stocks and ETFs to our Backtest Engine dashboard. Users can now view the top three performing strategies for any stock or ETF, each accompanied by risk/reward results from the past three years. This feature allows users to see historical performance without needing to set up a custom backtest.
TimeOrder Supports Up to 4 Conditions in Backtest Engine: To enhance our Proprietary Backtest Engine, our TimeOrder Multi-Condition feature now supports up to four customizable conditions, offering users enhanced flexibility in defining and testing trading strategies.
3 New Signals Added to Smart Stock Scanner: We’ve introduced three new signals to the Smart Stock Scanner, bringing the total to 34. These additions give users even more options to assess and backtest their risk and reward scenarios.
2 New Indicators Added: The David S&P 500 Aggregate Baskets, co-developed with client Robert David, offers a practical oversold signal. Additionally, the Federal Funds Effective Rate and the PEP Indicator are now accessible within the new client portal.
New Indicator Page: In line with the development of the new client portal, all indicators from the classic user portal are now consolidated into a single, user-friendly page in the new portal. This streamlined layout allows easy access to the most popular indicators and users' favorite indicators.
New Report Page: The new client portal now includes Analysts' Research Reports, TradingEdge, Archived Studies, Daily Reports, and Active Studies, retaining a familiar layout for ease of use. Users can save favorite reports using a “heart” icon, stored under "My Favorites." The new page also features advanced filtering options by date, keyword, and the ability to search Active Studies by specific stock or ETF symbols, making it easy to access market predictions and insights tailored to your interests.
SentimenTrader has introduced a "Trend Filter" to our Correlation Pattern Match (CPM) tool, enhancing the ability to evaluate market trends with precision. This new feature allows users to more precisely evaluate historical patterns, such as moving average direction and duration, to identify short-, medium-, and long-term trends, improving risk/reward assessments.
We’re thrilled to introduce the "Custom Symbol" feature on SentimenTrader’s BacktestEdge, allowing users to upload and test any stock. Additionally, we’ve enhanced the platform by adding 28 new stocks to the Backtest Engine and 16 new technical signals to the Smart Stock Scanner.
We are excited to announce the launch of our Strategy 2.0 on Sentimentrader. All of our 49 current and future strategies are backtestable with built-in strategy rules. With a simple click of a button, users can see the historical performance of a strategy with chart support. Additionally, users can modify the backtest setup rules, providing a quick way to see different results.
We are excited to announce the launch of our groundbreaking Dual Symbols Backtest feature on Sentimentrader. This powerful tool allows users to conduct pair trading backtest analysis on two symbols, potentially increasing profit and managing risk more effectively. Check out our tutorial using QQQ and SPY and start your analysis today!
SentimenTrader has expanded its resources with the addition of seven new backtest tutorial videos to the platform. These tutorials have been developed in response to client requests, providing step-by-step guidance on setting up backtests to meet real-life needs.
We are excited to announce the addition of two new proprietary indicators to our platform, developed by our Senior Research Analyst, Jay Kaeppel, to enhance our users' understanding of bond market dynamics: the JK Bond Cycle Model and the JK Bond Cycle Thermometer. These indicators, now fully integrated into our backtest engine, are designed to provide an edge in navigating the complexities of the bond markets.
SentimenTrader has expanded its toolkit, adding 32 new indicators, including Jay Kaeppel's PPI Stock Market Model and the daily RSP Optix and BIL Optix, to help investors track market sentiment. Also introduced is the 10-Day Sum Advance/Decline Ratio for enhanced market breadth analysis across 29 Indexes and ETFs. This streamlined update bolsters our monthly and daily market insights, aiding swift, data-driven investment decisions.
New users can now secure an exclusive offer on the SentimenTrader Essentials Yearly Package. This offer is available from March 28, 2024, 10:00 AM to April 2, 2024, 10:00 AM, NY Time. For full details and conditions of this offer, please review the Terms & Conditions. If you are currently in a trial or have had a trial account with us in the past, please contact us at [email protected].
We've added 5 new proprietary technical indicators to the Backtest Engine: Number of Consecutive Days with a Rising Moving Average, Number of Consecutive Days with a Declining Moving Average, Percentage Below N-Day High, Percentage Above N-Day Low, and Deviation from Trend Between Two Moving Averages. This expansion increases the total number of technical indicators available to 91.
28 Panic Breadth Composite Indicators: The Panic Breadth Composite provides a comprehensive snapshot of market sentiment and potential panic-driven behaviors. It offers a nuanced perspective on market dynamics, serving as a valuable tool for assessing market breadth and identifying potential inflection points.
4 Sentiment Cycle Indicators: This methodology aids in identifying our current position within the Typical Sentiment Cycle and enables investors to anticipate market movements based on historical behavior patterns, significantly enhancing strategic decision-making.
These proprietary indicators are only available through Sentimentrader.com.
Sentimentrader tech team is annoucing a new feature added to our suite of ETF Seasonality Indicators – the "$1 Growth Feature". Quickly access a visual representation of how $1 dollar has fluctuated across 114 ETFs through different seasons. Sign up for our trial and explore this new feature today.
The Growth vs. Value Relative Ratio Rank System strategy, developed by our esteemed senior analyst Dean Christians, represents an effective approach in momentum investing. It adeptly shifts between Growth and Value ETFs, guided by a sophisticated 84-day range rank analysis, offering a dynamic and informed investment choice. To learn more, go to 'Tools > Strategies' in your client portal.
We released our latest innovation: the Smart Stock Scanner. This scanner utilizes Machine Learning to scan and filter potential trading opportunities in S&P 1500 and Nasdaq 100 stocks each day after market closure. It presents users with in-depth backtest reports and actionable insights. This service is exclusively offered through our Essentials Plus bundle and can be accessed via the 'My Services' section in the user's portal.
We released our improved Backtest Engine 2.0, known as BacktestEdge, to our existing users. This user-friendly, no-programming-skills-required backtest engine is equipped with over 3000 SentimenTrader indicators and more than 50 popular technical indicators. It allows the import of external indicators and the setting of single or multiple entry/exit criteria, among other features. The Backtest Engine 2.0 can be accessed via the 'My Services' section in the user's portal.
