Sentiment uses short term technical analysis to gauge whether a stock is desired by investors. As a technical indicator, it focuses on recent trends as opposed to the long term health of the underlying company. Updates for the company such as a earnings release can move the stock away from current trends.
Recent trends are a good indicator of current market sentiments. In its most basic form, stocks that are trending up are desirable by investors while stocks currently falling must be unattractive.
InvestorsObserver's Sentimental Indicator tracks both changes in price and volume to analyze the most recent trends. Typically an increase in volume indicates ongoing trends are getting stronger, while a decrease in volume usually signals an end to the current trend.
Available options can also represent current sentiments for a given stock. Since investors are able to bet on future trends of stocks using options, we consider the ratio of calls to puts when analyzing market sentiments .
