Market sentiment can affect short-term price movements. That's why Admiral Markets provides sentiment tools to help you read the market and generate higher profits.

When trading, there are many important factors that can be used to analyze the markets. One of the most popular among traders is market sentiment, which basically refers to the general outlook or attitude of investors toward a certain trading instrument or the overall financial market. It shows the general optimism or pessimism of market participants that drives demand and supply, hence affecting the price movements.

Many traders often combine market sentiment indicators with other forms of analysis to identify reliable entry and exit signals. Alternatively, traders can also use Admiral Markets' sentiment tool to check which assets are dominated by bullish/bearish sentiment to confirm their trading positions. But before we get into that, let's learn a little bit more about market sentiment in forex trading.

Admiral Markets Sentiment Tool

 

Why Is Market Sentiment So Important?

Market sentiment is a crucial indicator in the trading world. It is a term used to describe the psychological attitude of market participants toward a particular asset or security. The market's demand and supply are often driven by market sentiment, and it's not always rational. This is typically seen as a result of "animal spirits" behavior, which is a type of crowd psychology where people suddenly have the urge to either buy or sell assets, resulting in high market volatility.

Understanding market sentiment is not exactly easy because there are many factors involved. The most important one is market psychology. Emotions like fear and greed can easily affect market movements, especially following the release of important news headlines or geopolitical events. When the market is dominated by fear, it can result in massive selloffs and quick price declines in instruments like forex, stocks, and indices. Meanwhile, when greed has taken over, we will see the market rallying upwards.

Now in order to understand why market participants behave a certain way, we should be able to observe and analyze market sentiment indicators, such as:

  • Volatility Index (VIX): an indicator of a need for insurance in the market. When the volatility is high, the VIX rises up, indicating the increased risk.
  • High-Low Index: a comparison of the number of stocks that make up 52-week highs as well as the number of stocks that makes up 52-week lows. When the index is high, it is considered to be a bullish market sentiment and vice versa.
  • Bullish Percentage Index (BPI): this indicator measures the total number of stocks in a given index that shows bullish patterns over a certain period of time based on point and figure charts. If the BPI score is high (around 80% or above), it shows that market sentiment is optimistic and vice versa.
  • Moving Averages in Technical Analysis: Simple Moving Averages can give the overall price movement of a given asset over a certain period. 50-day or 200-day moving averages, for instance, are pretty common indicators of market sentiment. When the 50-day SMA crosses above the 200-day SMA (often known as the golden cross), it indicates a bullish sentiment. When the 50-day SMA crosses below the 200-day SMA (also known as the death cross), it suggests a bearish market sentiment.

 

Trading with Admiral Market's Sentiment Tool

Aside from the abovementioned tools, Admiral Markets offers a sentiment widget to help clients see the correlation between long and short positions held by other traders in the market. The tool basically shows the "bull and bear" signals that can be used to identify the overall market mood.

The market sentiment tool follows gold, major forex pairs, and other additional pairs in real time by displaying other traders' long and short positions in the market. Here's an example of what it looks like on Admiral Markets' website:

Sentiment Tool

The sentiment is based on real-time data gathered from several trading service providers. The data above shows market sentiment data on each currency pair, in which the blue part represents the bullish side while the red area is for the bearish side. So, if EUR/CHF's sentiments are 49% in red and 51% in blue, it means that the market tends to be bullish on that pair. The small difference in percentage indicates that the bulls' and bears' strengths are almost equal. Bigger difference in percentages usually means stronger signals and higher chances to profit from the sentiment.

This widget is updated in real-time, which makes it easier for traders to get accurate analyses. However, please note that volume data in Admiral Markets' sentiment tool can change significantly during market moves or when traders open/close positions in huge volumes.

 

In a Nutshell

Market sentiment is one of the important indicators to trade profitably in financial markets. It is used to spot trading opportunities from short-term price movements as a result of investor attitudes toward a certain asset. Market sentiment is usually described as either bullish or bearish. When it's bullish, asset prices are usually going up, and vice versa.

Emotion often drives the price movement, so market sentiment can be irrational at times. In this case, you can use sentiment tools like the one offered by Admiral Markets to see the overall market sentiment in real-time without much of a hassle. As you can see from the example above, the data is very easy to read, even for beginners. Overall, it is a highly useful tool to help you see bullish/bearish signals to execute your trade at the right time and generate profit.

 


Admiral Markets is a forex and CFD brokerage that has been operating since 2001 to provide smart financial answers for traders around the globe. Their main services revolve around 3 key activities: Learning, Trade, and investing. In doing so, they have many registered subsidiaries, including Admiral Markets UK Ltd, Admiral Markets Pty Ltd (Australia), Admiral Markets AS Jordan Ltd, Admiral Markets Cyprus Ltd, Admirals SA (Pty) Ltd (South Africa), and Aglobe Investments Ltd (Seychelles) for the worldwide market.