BofA Bull & Bear Indicator Today (Nov 2026): Eased to Neutral

Bank of America's Bull & Bear Indicator is no longer flashing sell. It hit 9.7 in August, its highest reading since 2021, held in sell territory through mid-September, then eased to a neutral 7.2 by October 21 — per Finvaulta's summary of BofA's October 22 Flow Show, below the 8.0 level BofA itself defines as a sell signal. That's the number. The more interesting question is what the S&P 500 and Nasdaq did while the gauge rose to 9.7 and then cooled back down.

When the 9.7 reading landed in early August, both indices rallied on Friday, the same session BofA's note went out, on the back of weak jobs data. Then they dipped: by September 16 the S&P 500 was 2.3% below its August 11 close. By September 25 both had recovered past it — but the recovery didn't hold. By October 30 the S&P 500 had slipped back to 7,580.07, about 1.9% below its August 11 close, right around the same stretch the indicator eased out of sell territory. So you've got a 24-year-old contrarian signal that flashed caution for weeks and has now stood down, against a market that dipped, recovered, and dipped again. That gap between what the indicator says and what price is doing is the actual story here, and it matters more to how venture investors mark private portfolio companies against public comps than most people give it credit for.

What is the BofA Bull & Bear Indicator saying right now

The BofA Bull & Bear Indicator is a 0-to-10 contrarian sentiment score built from hedge fund positioning, credit spreads, equity fund flows, and market breadth. It rose from 9.4 to 9.7 in early August, its highest level since 2021, and Michael Hartnett's note framed it plainly: "extreme bull positioning says reduce risk exposure." Per Finvaulta's summaries of BofA's paywalled Flow Show notes, it was 9.7 again as of August 26 and 9.6 on September 2. It held at 9.5 through September 16, when the note said it "stays at 9.5 triggering contrarian sell signal," then cooled through October: per BofA's October 22 Flow Show, as summarized by Finvaulta, it "eased to 7.2 from 7.4 into neutral territory" as of October 21 — the first reading below the 8.0 sell threshold since the current signal triggered in late May. No newer Flow Show note has been located as of this update.

Here's the side-by-side that matters: what the sentiment data says versus what price has actually done since the signal.

Bull & Bear and cash figures are from Bank of America Global Research's Flow Show notes and Global Fund Manager Surveys (July-October 2026). Index moves are computed from FRED daily closes (August 11: S&P 500 7,728.20, Nasdaq 26,445.45). Signal-history figures come from Fortune, Yahoo Finance and Seeking Alpha reporting on the 2002-2026 record. Bull & Bear readings since August are from Finvaulta's summaries of BofA's Flow Show and have not been reported by a major outlet. Drawdown ranges vary by source and by which prior cycle is used as the comparison.

Why the Bull & Bear Indicator hit 9.7 vs prior signals

This reading didn't appear out of nowhere. BofA's September notes, as summarized by Finvaulta, say the current sell signal was triggered in late May. The gauge then climbed to 9.4 and then 9.7 in early August, its highest reading since 2021. Some August coverage called 9.7 the first sell signal since 2021, but that isn't right: Fortune reported the gauge rising from 7.9 to 8.5 in December 2025, "triggering its contrarian 'sell' signal." Near-record equity fund inflows, historically tight credit spreads, and unusually broad market breadth across sectors all pushed the score higher in the same direction at once, which is exactly the setup that produces extreme readings on a composite indicator like this.

What's unusual this time is that a second, independent BofA signal fired in the same stretch. Fund manager cash allocation fell to 3.6% of assets under management in the July 2026 Global Fund Manager Survey — a 210-panelist poll overseeing $555 billion — which is below the 4.0% level BofA defines as its own separate Cash Rule sell trigger. Two independently constructed BofA signals landing on "sell" in the same window is a stronger positioning statement than either one alone. That trend didn't ease up: BofA's August 7-13, 2026 survey put cash at 3.5%, the sixth-lowest reading since 1998, with global equity exposure climbing to a net 56% overweight — the most bullish positioning since November 2021.

Does the BofA sell signal actually predict corrections

Sort of, and that's the honest answer. Hartnett said in December 2025 that the sell signal had been activated 16 times since 2002, according to Fortune, and the current signal fired again in late May 2026. Market commentary tracking prior signals generally cites an average pullback in the 2-3% range for global equities over the following two to three months, with maximum drawdowns that different sources put anywhere from 8-9% to 15-20% depending on which cycle dominates the sample. That's not a tight, reliable forecast — it's a wide band that still leans negative.

EM allocation is already rolling over even as US allocation hits extremes. Net overweight positioning in global emerging markets slipped from +48% in May 2026 to +42% in June and +32% in July — investors trimming EM exposure well before the Bull & Bear Indicator's US-centric extreme even registered. That's a leading wobble worth watching alongside the headline number.

What the headline misses

BofA's own history shows readings above 8.0 have sat there for weeks before anything happens to price, and in some cycles nothing happens at all — the signal has thrown false alarms before. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both rallied the same Friday the August note went out, on weak jobs data that arguably should have been read as a negative catalyst. Real earnings strength is part of that: Cloudflare's stock is up roughly 44% year to date after a beat-and-raise quarter, and both Alphabet and Microsoft guided AI capex higher rather than lower in their most recent reports, according to The Motley Fool. A GP who marks down every portfolio company every time a sentiment gauge gets stretched risks systematically under-marking good companies during exactly the stretch when they're compounding fastest.

A hard reading of the two BofA sell signals also glosses over the fact that they're mechanically driven — by fund flows, cash balances, and credit technicals rather than corporate fundamentals. That's useful as a positioning gauge, not as a substitute for earnings data. Reporting from Yahoo Finance and Investing.com both note Hartnett himself has stopped short of calling for an immediate reduction in exposure, framing this as a caution flag rather than an exit order.

What markets actually did in the weeks after

The Friday rally that greeted the 9.7 reading didn't hold. Rising U.S.-Iran tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and surging oil and Treasury yields pulled both indices lower through mid-to-late August, and by September 1, 2026 the S&P 500 closed at 7,631.47 and the Nasdaq Composite at 26,099.77 — each down roughly 1.3% from their August 11 closes of 7,728.20 and 26,445.45 (FRED S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite daily closes). The dip deepened into mid-September. On September 16 the S&P 500 closed at 7,551.81, down 2.3%, which is inside the 2-3% average this signal has historically produced. The Nasdaq closed at 25,978.42, down 1.8%. Those were the lows of the move so far, nowhere near the sharper 8-20% drawdowns some prior cycles saw. Then the market recovered. On September 25, 2026 the S&P 500 closed at 7,743.41, 0.2% above its August 11 close, and the Nasdaq closed at 27,068.72, up 2.4%.

That recovery didn't hold either. Through October the S&P 500 gave the gain back: it closed at 7,580.07 on October 30, 2026, down about 1.9% from its August 11 level, and the Nasdaq Composite closed at 26,184.72 on October 29, down roughly 1.0% (FRED S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite daily closes). That renewed dip arrived in roughly the same window the Bull & Bear Indicator itself eased out of sell territory to 7.2 — the sentiment gauge cooled at the same time price cooled too, rather than the gauge's earlier extreme preceding a bigger drawdown later.

In other words, the tension this post opened with, an extreme sell signal against a market that shrugged, played out in stages: a shallow dip, a full recovery, then a second, smaller dip as the indicator itself normalized. The historical 2-3% average pullback arrived for the S&P 500 in mid-September and was fully erased by late September, and the late-October dip has so far stayed smaller than that first one. BofA's history cites average pullbacks over two to three months from the signal date (late May 2026), so the window this signal covers has now largely closed, and the indicator no longer reads as a sell.

What this means for marking VC portfolio companies

The question that matters for anyone marking a venture portfolio isn't whether to trim public exposure — it's what a now-normalized indicator should change about the multiples used to mark private companies against their public comps. The gauge easing from 9.7 to a neutral 7.2 doesn't mean the risk has disappeared, but it does mean positioning is no longer the extreme it was in August. Today's SaaS and AI-infrastructure comps are trading at multiples set during a window that ran from extreme-bullish to neutral in about ten weeks — worth remembering the next time sentiment swings back toward an extreme.

If you're finalizing a 409A or a markup this quarter, the more useful exercise is still a downside sensitivity: what does the implied multiple look like if the public comp set compresses 15-20%, not what it looks like today. That's not a prediction that a correction happens on any particular timeline — it's matching the risk assumption in the mark to how fast sentiment has already moved once this cycle, from a 24-year extreme to neutral in about ten weeks. The number worth watching next isn't whether the indicator stays calm; it's whether the next round of mega-cap earnings pushes it back toward either extreme.