As of: 2026-08-22
Each bar shows the individual value of an indicator (0--100). The percentage on the right indicates its weight in the overall score.
Red values signal fear, green values signal greed. The overall score is the weighted average of all indicators.
The chart shows the Fear & Greed Index over time. The colored zones mark the sentiment areas: Red = Fear, Yellow = Neutral, Green = Greed.
Navigation: Select the time period using the buttons (1M to Max). Hover over the chart to see the score on a specific day.
A fresh reading is produced on each trading day from daily closing and spot data. Six inputs are weighted and combined into a scale running from 0, meaning Extreme Fear, to 100, meaning Extreme Greed. Because gold is bought mainly as an investment rather than consumed, the reading responds sharply to geopolitical events, to rate decisions and to what the official sector is buying.
Data sources: daily closing prices, spot prices, EUR/USD exchange rates. Updated daily on trading days. This index is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
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Enjoying what you see and read?
We pour our heart into keeping preciousmetalprices.com fast, clean and free — no paywalls, no clutter, just reliable facts and live prices. If it helps you, the nicest way to say thank you is to pass it on. Every share helps a fellow investor discover us and keeps the project going. 💛
How the Index Is Calculated
Six independent market signals go in; one sentiment figure comes out. Each signal is first rescaled to a common 0-to-100 range so that they can be compared at all, then given a fixed weight chosen to reflect how much it matters in the gold market specifically.
Calculation Formula
Score = ∑ (Indicatori × Weighti)
Each Indicatori ranges between 0 and 100, and the sum of all weights equals 1.0.
The 6 Indicators and Their Weights
Momentum
25 %Compares the current price with the 50-day moving average (SMA50). If the price is significantly above the average, greed prevails. If below, fear dominates. A distance of more than 10% from the SMA50 indicates an exaggeration.
Volatility
25 %Compares short-term volatility (10 days) with long-term volatility (60 days). A sharp increase in short-term volatility signals nervousness and fear. Stable volatility indicates composure.
Ratio Signal
15 %Analyzes the gold/silver ratio and other metal ratios. A rising ratio (gold gains relative to silver) signals a flight to safety = fear. A falling ratio shows risk appetite = greed.
Acceleration
15 %Measures whether the current price trend is accelerating or decelerating. Increasing upward acceleration signals greed -- more and more buyers are jumping in. A slowdown may indicate a trend reversal.
ATH Distance
10 %Measures the distance to the all-time high. The closer the price is to the ATH, the greedier the sentiment. A distance of over 20% indicates resignation and fear.
USD Strength
10 %Tracks the EUR/USD trend over 20 trading days. A weakening dollar is positive for precious metals (greed). A strengthening dollar depresses prices (fear).
Note: For copper, the ratio signal is omitted (weight 0%) since no meaningful reference ratio exists. The remaining indicators are weighted more heavily accordingly.
What the Values Mean
Each of the five bands describes a recognisable phase of the gold market. One peculiarity is worth noting: gold's fear phases tend to be shorter than those of the industrial metals, because the very uncertainty that frightens investors elsewhere is what sends them into gold in the first place.
Extreme Fear
This is capitulation, and it is often mechanical rather than emotional. During a liquidity squeeze -- March 2020 being the textbook case -- institutions sell gold not because they dislike it but because it is the easiest thing they own to sell, raising cash to meet margin calls elsewhere. Readings this low have marked the floor of a correction more often than not.
Fear
Buyers step back and wait. Rising real yields or a firming dollar are the usual causes, since both raise the opportunity cost of holding an asset that pays nothing. This is the band in which contrarian money typically starts to accumulate quietly.
Neutral
Consolidation. Neither macroeconomic anxiety nor enthusiasm has the upper hand and the market waits for something to react to -- the next rate decision, the next inflation print, the next headline out of a conflict zone.
Greed
Rising prices attract more buyers, which raises prices further. Official-sector purchases, geopolitical crises or inflation worries supply the fuel; retail participation broadens; and the risk of chasing the market at its most expensive grows accordingly.
Extreme Greed
The euphoria phase announces itself in the newspapers: record highs on the front page, dealers reporting queues. Short-term corrections have followed such moments more often than not -- although over longer horizons the underlying uptrend has usually resumed regardless.
Historical Patterns
Gold has been running through sentiment cycles for as long as there have been markets to measure. As the principal investment metal and the traditional crisis asset, it registers macroeconomic shifts earlier and more sharply than most:
When Gold Sentiment Broke Down
Three episodes stand out. April 2013 brought a flash crash that removed more than $200 an ounce inside two sessions, a reading that would have registered in single figures. March 2020 saw gold sold precisely because it was liquid, to meet margin calls elsewhere. And through the middle of 2022 the Federal Reserve's aggressive tightening kept the price under pressure for months on end. In each case, new highs arrived within six to eighteen months.
The Great Advances
The 2024/25 advance took gold past $2,800 and held the index between 80 and 95 for weeks at a stretch. Central bank buying on a scale not seen in decades -- China, Poland, Türkiye -- combined with de-dollarisation and open geopolitical conflict. What made the episode instructive was its duration: extreme greed readings persisted without the correction they normally invite, which is what happens when the buying is structural rather than speculative.
Gold Moving First
A gold reading markedly above silver and the industrial metals is the signature of a flight to quality: money seeking safety without committing to commodities as an asset class. Historically the rest of the complex has tended to follow, but only after a lag measured in weeks or months.
Conclusion: Every crisis leaves its fingerprint on the gold market, and the market remembers. What it does not do is repeat itself exactly. Use the historical parallels as orientation and nothing more.
Contrarian Investing
Gold is where contrarian investing works most reliably, for a structural reason: the conditions that frighten everybody else are precisely the conditions that increase long-term demand for a safe haven.
Buy When There Is Fear
Gold readings below 20 tend to appear in liquidity crises -- moments when gold is sold not because sentiment has turned against it but because it is the most saleable thing on the books. March 2020 is the model. Over the past two decades a gold reading beneath 20 has been followed by recovery within six months in better than 70 % of instances.
Be Cautious When There Is Greed
Above 85, treat gold with care -- but care is not the same as selling. Gold uptrends can be structurally driven and can run for years, as central bank accumulation and de-dollarisation have demonstrated. The sensible response in a greed phase is to keep the regular purchase running, decline the additional lump sum, and look very hard at the premium being charged on physical metal.
Conclusion: Patience is the entire strategy. Investors who bought methodically through the fear phases and sat still through the greed phases have historically done better than those who let the sentiment reading dictate their behaviour.
Limitations & Pitfalls
Even for the most closely watched metal on earth, there are things this index cannot see:
- ◆ Official-sector buying is invisible — When a central bank accumulates tonnage, the demand picture changes fundamentally. A technical index sees none of it directly -- only the eventual price effect, and often weeks after the fact.
- ◆ Structural bull markets — Through 2024/25, with de-dollarisation and geopolitics driving a sustained uptrend, the reading sat at Extreme Greed for months without the correction that normally follows. The index cannot tell speculative greed from the fundamentally justified kind.
- ◆ Demand flows peculiar to gold — Indian and Chinese jewellery buying, ETF creations and redemptions, and the flow of recycled metal all move the price materially. None of them enters the calculation directly.
- ◆ The crisis lag — In a liquidity crisis gold is sold precisely because it holds its value, which is when it is most worth owning. The index registers fear at exactly the moment the medium-term case is strongest.
Conclusion: Use the gold reading as a compass, not a map. Gold answers to central banks, geopolitics and the dollar's reserve status, and any of the three can override a short-term sentiment signal entirely.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Fear & Greed Index
When is the gold reading recalculated?
Once per trading day, after the close. Weekends and holidays carry forward the last trading day's value. Intraday movement does not enter the calculation at all -- what the index measures is the overall tone of the day, not the noise within it.
Why does gold usually score above the other metals?
Because it has been in a structural uptrend since 2023, driven by official-sector buying and de-dollarisation. Sustained momentum and proximity to the all-time high both feed directly into the score. In that environment a gold reading of 70 is closer to neutral than the same number would be for platinum.
Can I use it alongside a regular gold purchase plan?
As a supplement, yes. Regular purchasing already handles timing through pound-cost averaging, but the index can inform the decisions around it -- adding to a purchase during a fear phase, or declining to make an unscheduled one during extreme greed. UK investors have a second consideration the index knows nothing about: gains on Sovereigns struck from 1837 onwards and on Britannias fall outside Capital Gains Tax entirely, because both remain sterling legal tender, whereas gains on a Krugerrand or a Maple Leaf do not.
What do interest rates do to the gold reading?
Rising real yields make a non-yielding asset less attractive, which depresses the price and pulls the reading down towards fear. Cuts, or the expectation of them, do the reverse. Note that the index only sees rate expectations after they have shown up in the price -- it does not read central bank minutes.
Why use this page rather than the overview?
The overview sets all five metals side by side for a quick comparison. This page goes considerably deeper on one of them: the full indicator breakdown, a dedicated historical chart and a direct link through to the current gold price.
Is extreme fear a signal to buy straight away?
Attentively rather than immediately. Readings below 15 in gold have been followed by a higher price six months later in roughly 70 % of past instances, which is a good record but not a guarantee. Two practical points: spread the purchase across several days, and abandon any attempt to identify the exact low. Nobody catches it.