Daily Sentiment Index Calculator
When nearly every trader in a room expects prices to rise, there is often nobody left to do the buying, and that is exactly the moment sentiment data earns its keep. The Daily Sentiment Index (DSI) turns a day’s opinion poll into one number: the percentage of surveyed traders who are bullish, read most carefully at its extremes.
Enter the bullish count and the total number surveyed below. The calculator returns the DSI to two decimal places, the non-bullish share, and a plain band reading, from extreme pessimism through neutral to the crowded bullish readings that futures traders have watched since the late 1980s.
The index describes one poll on one day. It is a gauge of crowd mood, not a forecast, and it says nothing about market fundamentals or value.
Quick Answer
Key takeaways
- The DSI is a share, not a score built from prices: bullish respondents divided by everyone surveyed, times 100.
- Neutrals stay in the denominator. Dropping them inflates the reading and breaks comparison with published sentiment surveys.
- The signal lives at the edges. Jake Bernstein’s long-running DSI work treats roughly 90% and above as top territory and 10% and below as bottom territory, with wide, unremarkable ground in between.
- One day’s poll is a snapshot. A short average of daily readings, or a move into an extreme, tells you more than any single print.
- Quick Answer
- How to use the Daily Sentiment Index calculator
- The DSI formula, and the denominator that decides everything
- Worked example: 170 bulls in a poll of 250
- Reading the bands: where a DSI print actually means something
- DSI versus the other sentiment gauges you will meet
- What competing sentiment calculators get wrong
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
- References
How to use the Daily Sentiment Index calculator
Start with a real poll, not a guess. Count the respondents who said they expect prices to rise, and enter that as the bullish figure. Then enter everyone who answered, including the bearish and the neutral respondents, as the total. Press Calculate and read the band verdict before the detail rows: it places the reading on the scale from extreme pessimism to extreme bullishness.
The data can come from your own trading group’s daily poll, a newsletter survey, or a published series you are converting into counts. If a source gives you percentages only, multiply each percentage by the sample size to recover the counts. If you plan to track the index over a week or a month, smoothing the prints with the average of percentages calculator gives a fairer picture than reacting to each day in isolation, as long as each day’s sample is a similar size.
The DSI formula, and the denominator that decides everything
The formula is a single division, and every argument about the DSI is really an argument about what goes underneath it.
That convention matches how the best-known sentiment surveys report. The AAII Investor Sentiment Survey publishes bullish, neutral, and bearish shares that sum to 100%, with long-run averages near 37.5% bullish, 31.5% neutral, and 31.0% bearish. Jake Bernstein’s DSI, tracked daily since 1987 according to his own account of the series, is likewise expressed as the percentage of bullish opinion among the small traders polled. Change the denominator to bullish plus bearish only, and a poll with many neutrals suddenly reads far more bullish than either of those series would report it. The numbers stop being comparable, which is why this calculator keeps neutrals in the total and shows the non-bullish share separately instead.
Worked example: 170 bulls in a poll of 250
The calculator is pre-filled with this poll, and every figure below is what it returns.
DSI = (170 / 250) x 100 = 68.00% bullish. Read it in two parts. Direction first: at 68%, better than two-thirds of the room expects higher prices, so the day’s mood is unmistakably positive. Extremity second: the reading is 22 points below the 90% zone where Bernstein’s work, summarized in his MoneyShow series on small-trader sentiment, says tops have tended to form, and nowhere near the 10% zone associated with bottoms. A trader who tracks this poll daily would log the 68%, note the bullish lean, and wait. Pairing the log with the market’s own daily percentage return shows whether price is confirming the mood or diverging from it, and checking what followed past extremes against S&P 500 returns keeps the interpretation honest.
Reading the bands: where a DSI print actually means something
Most days, the DSI means very little. Sentiment spends most of its life in the middle bands, drifting with the recent price action, and the research tradition behind the index is blunt about this: the information is concentrated at the extremes, where agreement becomes one-sided enough that the marginal buyer or seller is used up.
| DSI reading | Band | What it has tended to mean |
|---|---|---|
| 90 to 100 | Extreme bullish | Crowded optimism. Bernstein’s series treats 90% and higher as the zone that has tended to precede tops. |
| 75 to 89 | Strongly bullish | Optimism is heavy. Not the classic extreme, but chasing strength here has poor odds historically. |
| 51 to 74 | Bullish lean | A normal positive mood, like the 68.00% worked example. Direction without a contrarian warning. |
| 50 | Split | The crowd is evenly divided. No lean in either direction. |
| 26 to 49 | Bearish lean | Fewer than half are bullish. A soft mood that often just mirrors a recent decline. |
| 11 to 25 | Strongly bearish | Bulls are scarce and pessimism is entrenched, though still short of the washed-out extreme. |
| 0 to 10 | Extreme bearish | Capitulation territory. The zone that has tended to precede bottoms in the DSI record. |
Two cautions belong with the table. First, Bernstein himself stresses that the crowd can stay right for a long time: an extreme reading is a leading indicator, not a timing trigger, and he pairs it with price-based timing before acting. Second, the exact cutoffs drift by market. A quiet utility stock’s poll may never print 90, while a hot futures contract or a crypto asset can live above 75 for weeks. Judge each market against its own history of readings, not against a universal ruler.
DSI versus the other sentiment gauges you will meet
The DSI is one member of a family, and confusing its members produces bad readings. The AAII survey is weekly and asks individual investors about the next six months, so it moves slowly and suits a weekly log. The DSI is daily and was built on futures traders, so it reacts within days. The NAAIM Exposure Index does not ask opinions at all: it averages the actual equity exposure active managers report, which makes it a positioning measure rather than a mood measure. Options-based gauges such as the put-call ratio, covered in AAII’s guide to the put-call ratio, infer mood from money committed, and the CBOE VIX infers it from option prices. Surveys can be gamed by who bothers to answer; positioning and options data cannot be faked as easily but mix hedging with opinion. Serious sentiment work cross-checks at least two families before trusting an extreme.
Sample quality matters as much as the gauge. A poll of 25 friends in a trading chat is a mood ring, not an index: at that size, five people changing their minds swings the DSI by 20 points. Published series poll hundreds of respondents, and even they bounce around. If you run your own poll, keep the question, the audience, and the time of day fixed, because a DSI series is only useful if each day’s number was produced the same way as the last.
What competing sentiment calculators get wrong
The rival DSI calculators reviewed for this page share the same formula on the surface, and then quietly diverge where it counts.
Error 1: the wrong denominator. At least one top-ranking rival defines the total as bullish plus bearish opinions only, which throws neutral respondents out of the calculation. A poll of 120 bullish, 80 bearish, and 100 neutral reads 60.00% on that tool and 40.00% here (120 / 300). Only the second figure matches the AAII and Bernstein convention, and only the second can be compared with published sentiment history.
Miss 2: no band interpretation. Rivals return a bare percentage and stop, leaving the reader to guess whether 68% is calm or crowded. The band verdict and the table above place every reading against the 90 and 10 extremes the indicator is actually known for.
Miss 3: no audit trail. The result here shows the bullish count, the non-bullish count, and both shares, so a reader can verify the division at a glance and spot a mistyped total before acting on the number.
One honest limit applies to this page too: a calculator cannot fix a bad poll. If the sample is tiny, self-selected, or asked a leading question, the DSI will be precise and meaningless at the same time.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Daily Sentiment Index, or DSI, is the percentage of surveyed traders or investors who are bullish on a given day. It is calculated as bullish respondents divided by all respondents, times 100, and it has been tracked daily in futures markets since the late 1980s.
In the DSI tradition, readings of 90% or higher are treated as extreme bullishness that has tended to precede market tops, and readings of 10% or lower as extreme pessimism that has tended to precede bottoms. The exact levels vary somewhat from market to market.
Yes. The total surveyed includes bullish, bearish, and neutral respondents. Excluding neutrals inflates the bullish share and makes the result impossible to compare with published surveys such as the AAII survey, whose three shares sum to 100%.
Mostly at its extremes. When the vast majority of small traders agree on one direction, that agreement itself has often marked a turning point, so very high readings warn of tops and very low readings of bottoms. In the middle ranges the DSI usually just follows the recent trend and carries little contrarian information.
The DSI is a daily poll, built originally on futures and commodity traders, and it is read mainly for same-week extremes. The AAII survey is a weekly poll of individual stock investors about the next six months, with long-run averages near 37.5% bullish. Both report the bullish share of all respondents, so their levels can be compared, but their speed and audiences differ.
Yes, if the percentages come from a single poll whose shares sum to 100%, the bullish percentage is already the DSI. If you only have counts for part of the poll, or percentages from different polls, convert back to counts first using each poll’s sample size, then use the calculator.
Large enough that a few changed minds cannot swing the result. With 25 respondents, one person is worth 4 points; with 250, one person is worth 0.4 points. Published sentiment surveys typically poll hundreds of respondents, and consistency of the audience and question matters as much as raw size.
No. Even its creator treats the DSI as a leading indicator that needs price-based timing for confirmation, because an extreme reading can persist while the crowd stays right for weeks. Use it to flag crowded trades and to size or time decisions made on other evidence, not as a stand-alone buy or sell signal.
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References
- Jake Bernstein, “Is the Small Trader Always Wrong? (Part 3)” – the 90% and 10% DSI levels that have tended to precede tops and bottoms. MoneyShow: Small Trader Sentiment, Part 3. Accessed October 2026.
- Jake Bernstein, “Is the Small Trader Always Wrong? (Part 2)” – the DSI tracked daily since 1987 and its record as a leading indicator. MoneyShow: Small Trader Sentiment, Part 2. Accessed October 2026.
- Jake Bernstein interview, “Using the Daily Sentiment Index” – the 85 to 90% bullish zone, and why extremes still need timing confirmation. MoneyShow: Using the Daily Sentiment Index. Accessed October 2026.
- American Association of Individual Investors, “AAII Investor Sentiment Survey” – weekly bullish, neutral, and bearish shares and their historical averages. AAII: Investor Sentiment Survey. Accessed October 2026.
- American Association of Individual Investors, “Analyzing the AAII Sentiment Survey Without Hindsight” – survey method, sample, and how the shares are tabulated. AAII Journal: Analyzing the Sentiment Survey. Accessed October 2026.
- American Association of Individual Investors, “Bullish Sentiment” dictionary entry – the definition of bullish sentiment as a percentage of investors expecting prices to rise. AAII: Bullish Sentiment definition. Accessed October 2026.
- American Association of Individual Investors, “The Put-Call Ratio: Viewing Market Sentiment Through Options Activity” – the options-based sentiment gauge compared in this article. AAII Journal: The Put-Call Ratio. Accessed October 2026.
- Interactive Brokers Campus, “NAAIM Exposure Index” glossary – the positioning-based sentiment measure from active managers’ actual equity exposure. IBKR Campus: NAAIM Exposure Index. Accessed October 2026.
- Interactive Brokers Campus, “VIX (Volatility Index)” glossary – the CBOE volatility index as an options-implied sentiment gauge. IBKR Campus: VIX Volatility Index. Accessed October 2026.
- McClellan Financial Publications, “Investors Intelligence Data Nearing Parity” – the advisor-sentiment survey tradition and its bull-bear spread. McClellan Oscillator: Investors Intelligence Data. Accessed October 2026.
- Sentiment and positioning survey overview, “Week 11: Sentiment and positioning” – the DSI as a contrarian survey source, with its below-10 and above-90 extremes. 50in50: Sentiment and Positioning. Accessed October 2026.