The headline image above is a screen capture of CNN's Fear & Greed Index from late September.
If you're unfamiliar with this amazing bit of world-building from a dystopian sci-fi novel, the Fear & Greed Index is CNN's ongoing analysis of investor sentiment, tracking the overall "mood" of the stock market on a spectrum that runs from Extreme Fear to Extreme Greed.
The idea is that greed and fear are the two emotions that run the stock market, which is pretty hard to dispute. And yes, I do find it deeply concerning that we have built such a lynchpin of society that shapes absolutely everything we do exclusively on two of the most negative and harmful emotions available to us as human beings, thanks for asking. But that's something we should probably save for a "This Millennium in Review" column.