With a direct test of whether it has been worth acting on
The Fear & Greed Index compresses volatility, momentum and volume, social activity, Bitcoin dominance and search interest into a single reading from 0 to 100. Plenty of sites display it. Almost none answer the question anybody actually has on seeing it, which is whether a low reading has historically been a good moment to buy.
That question is testable, so this page tests it: every daily reading since 2018 is joined to Bitcoin's closing price and grouped by category, and the median return over the following 30 and 90 days is reported for each. The percentile beside the current value does the same job in the other direction — a reading of 25 means little in isolation and quite a lot once you know what share of the last several years sat below it.
The sample deserves care rather than confidence. Consecutive days at the same reading are one event, not thirty, so the table counts episodes as well as days and the episode number is the honest one. The windows overlap, and the whole history sits inside a single Bitcoin era. What the table gives you is a check on a widely repeated claim, not a strategy — and a check is worth more than repeating the claim untested.
⚠️ Not investment advice. Historical groupings describe what happened in one market over a few years and carry no promise about the future. The index is published by alternative.me and this page does not control its methodology. All decisions and risks are your own.
A single 0 to 100 reading published by alternative.me that blends volatility, market momentum and volume, social media activity, Bitcoin dominance and search interest. Low values are labelled fear and high values greed.
This page tests it rather than assuming it. Every daily reading since 2018 is joined to Bitcoin’s close and grouped by category, and the median return over the next 30 and 90 days is shown for each. The result is displayed as measured, including when it contradicts the popular contrarian rule.
Because consecutive days at the same reading are one event, not many. A month of fear contributes about thirty rows but only a single independent observation. The episode count collapses each run into one and is much smaller, which is the number worth reading.
A reading of 25 means little on its own. Knowing what share of the past several years sat below it turns the number into something comparable — the same value can be unremarkable in one period and unusual in another.
Largely not. Most of its inputs — volatility, momentum, volume, dominance — are derived from price, so the index moves closely with the market rather than ahead of it. A low reading mainly reflects that the price has already fallen, which limits how much it can add.
The index begins on 1 February 2018, giving roughly three thousand daily readings. That covers only a few market cycles, so groupings drawn from it describe a specific era rather than a general rule.