Forex Market Sentiment
Who is long, who is short, and how the mood is shifting: retail books, institutional futures, central bank tone and news tone, measured for every major currency and pair.
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What changed
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Retail crowd
The share of retail traders positioned long across the broker books we track, read as the median book so no single outlier book can drag the headline number. Each book measures its own clients, so the books never agree exactly; when even the middle of the pack spreads past 20 points the pair in question is flagged as split instead of smoothed over. Crowd positioning is often read as a contrarian input; we show the measurement and leave that reading to you.
Institutional futures
Weekly CFTC Commitments of Traders data. Leveraged funds are hedge funds and CTAs, the fast money; asset managers are the real-money side. Net means long minus short contracts, and the 52-week marker shows where the current net sits inside the past year's range. A new report lands every Friday evening and our COT weekly article breaks it down the hour it publishes.
Central bank tone
Every statement, minutes entry and speech from the eight major central banks is scored from -1 (dovish) to +1 (hawkish) by our engine, then aggregated with newer documents weighing more. Statements additionally get a sentence-level comparison against the previous one, so a single changed sentence is visible the day it happens.
The sentiment lean
Each currency's lean is the equal-weighted average of whichever pillars are live for it right now, and every number ships with its full breakdown, so nothing here is a black box. Pillars still accumulating history show as locked rather than estimated. Pair leans combine the pair's own retail book with the gap between its two currencies' leans. It describes current positioning and language; it never predicts the next move.
Sentiment history
Every subject is sampled on the half hour and the full component breakdown is stored with each point, so the history charts replay exactly what the tool showed at that moment. Retail books move between samples; central bank tone moves when banks publish; futures step once a week. The chart never smooths one cadence into another, and it never extends further back than the measurements exist.
Crowd shifts
When a pair composite book crosses the 50 line with at least a 5 point move inside 24 hours, or moves 8 points to one side, it lands in the feed and is marked on the history chart. The thresholds are fixed and published; no shift is ever inferred or predicted.
The market gauge
The strip above the boards reads the whole board at once: how many books are one-sided, how far the average book sits from 50/50, and how strong the average currency lean is. It describes breadth of positioning across the market, never the direction of the next move.
Liquidity
Spread statistics are measured on our own live price feed, the same feed that powers this site's rate tools. Each pair's current spread is compared against its own norm for this hour of the day, built from four weeks of half-hour medians. Spreads widening around news and the daily rollover is normal; the profile shows by how much, and your broker's spreads will differ.
Sentiment describes what market participants currently hold and say. It is measured state, not a forecast, and nothing on this page is a trade recommendation.