CNN Fear and Greed Index just posted Extreme Fear today. Fear and Extreme Greed are leading indicators. I've been using this index for buying (not selling) for several years. Usually, but not always, when it hits Extreme Fear, then the market will have a *local* bottom in a week or so. I'd say use it to shove additional money into the market, in addition to your usual strategy. I don't find Extreme Greed as useful -- the market may take one or two months before hitting a top. You can use Supertrend, a lagging indicator, to note when you've recently passed the top of a local top.

MacroMicro has some historical data of the S&P vs. CNN Fear and Greed Index. You can see that this local low is not lower than the March 2026 and April 2025 lows, but both of those lows were at Extreme Fear. We also had Extreme Fear on November 2025 which was not a local low.
en.macromicro.me - Cnn fear and greed

Some other sentiment indicators:
* AAII Sentiment Survey.
* Bank of America Bull and Bear Indicator: The indicator slid to 7.4 down from 8.1 (and a summer peak of 9.7 in August). Use Google Gemini AI to find this proprietary info.
- Currently, both of these indicators are *not* "agreeing with" the CNN Fear and Greed Index.

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October is a common month for both crashes and rebounds. Summer peaks, fall has a fall, then winter picks up. That means in late September through early November, there's usually a *local* low, and the market goes up at the end of the year. It's already midway through October, so might as well presume this low will be the October / fall low.

I'd still recommend DCA over timing the market, but if you have a variable cash cushion so have some extra money to stick into the market, might as well do it whenever there's a local low. I'm using it to move RMD stocks, though a better time was during a previous Extreme Fear, back in March 2026.