How long does it take for mood to catch up to flow?

Derivative

The question

One regularity shows up in nearly every episode of the archive: capital moves before confidence. Flow — money actually changing position — turns first; the investor's mood, measured by the Ânima Index, is slow to believe. But how slow?

What the archive shows

In 2018, after the truckers' shock, risk appetite jumped to the top in June while mood stayed on the floor; Ânima only crossed into positive territory in September — about three months. In COVID, flow retraced the path in June 2020, but mood only caught up in November — about five months. In both, the order was the same: money first, faith later.

What didn't happen

But there is no fixed number of months — and the order does not always hold. In June 2016, mood did the opposite: it surged to extreme optimism while the structure of relative prices barely moved, and it was mood that ran ahead and got it wrong. The lag is a tendency of the archive, not a law.

Honest verdict

Money usually arrives before faith — generally by three to five months. But anyone who treats this as a clock rather than a tendency will be contradicted by the months in which mood runs out front.

Continue the story: The 2018 truckers' strike · What happened after fear priced everything · What the Ânima Index is →

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Characters: Mood · Flow (risk appetite) · Structure (intermarket)