Fear & Greed jindex recently printed a 5 and everyone instantly started tweeting “generational bottom” like the market owes them a bounce, but if you actually look at the numbers instead of the vibes it gets way less romantic. Historically, buying when the index is under 20, meaning peak panic, gave something like a 2.4% average return over the next 90 days. What we can get from now is months of grinding, fake pumps, lower highs and people convincing themselves the bottom is in every three weeks. Extreme fear doesn’t automatically mean buy, sometimes it just means the trend is still down and the knife is still falling, and if you doubt that just ask anyone who thought Luna at $30 was peak capitulation before it nuked to basically zero. Sentiment at 5 tells you people are hurting it tells you positioning is stressed it tells you volatility is high but it does not promise upside on your preferred timeline Catching knives feels legendary in theory, but in practice it usually just leaves you bleeding and tweeting about “long-term conviction.”