Stock market sentiment: October 2026

Once a month we add up every bullish and bearish call the finance accounts we track made on a named company, split the total by sector, and check it against what the stocks did. This is the October 2026 edition, built from September's calls. The short answer: bullish and steady, carried by technology, with consumer stocks the one sector that turned.

Is the stock market bullish or bearish right now?

Bullish. The accounts we track mentioned 1,436 companies in September, 12,895 times. Of the calls that took a side, 8,608 were bullish and 2,994 bearish: 74% bullish. August was 75%.

The last column is the one to watch. Graded accounts are the ones with more than ten resolved calls and most of them right, the people whose track record we can check. They ran 2,496 bullish to 328 bearish in September, 88%. Both lines have held in a narrow band since June. The one dip was July, when both lines lost about four points.

Week by week, the bullish share never left a range of 73% to 78% all month. The chart shows the daily split of mentions: bullish, bearish, neutral chatter, and passing references.

Under the steady headline, one sector moved a long way.

Stock market sentiment by sector

Mentions and bull-to-bear counts for September, with each sector's bullish share in September and August:

	Mentions	Bull : Bear	Sep	Aug
Technology	5,395	3,747 : 1,092	77%	77%
Communication	1,557	1,033 : 349	75%	74%
Consumer discretionary	1,346	568 : 601	49%	67%
Financials	820	528 : 199	73%	77%
Industrials	765	517 : 186	74%	74%
Healthcare	661	412 : 192	68%	72%
Energy	666	544 : 71	89%	86%

Technology is 42% of all mentions and sat at 77% bullish both months, which is most of why the headline number did not move. Market sentiment on chips, software and the AI build-out held at August's level.

Consumer discretionary is the change. It went from two bulls for every bear in August to more bears than bulls in September, with 753 different accounts weighing in. Nike, Lululemon and McDonald's drove it (the table further down). Even the graded accounts cooled on the sector, from 50 bullish and 8 bearish in August to 66 and 26.

Energy reads 89% bullish, but 557 of its 666 mentions came from one account posting about refiners. Without it, energy was 76 bullish to 30 bearish, 72%, in line with the market. Treat that row as one account's strong view.

The most bullish stocks right now

The biggest names by September mentions where the accounts we track leaned bullish, with the graded split beneath each and the price over the month:

	Mentions	Bull : Bear	Price
MetaMETA	790	540 : 162graded 141 : 11	25.1%
NVIDIANVDA	481	322 : 116graded 89 : 11	3.8%
MicronMU	438	319 : 68graded 78 : 9	9.9%
NebiusNBIS	371	305 : 40graded 171 : 16	12.4%
AMDAMD	313	232 : 54graded 37 : 5	29.1%
DellDELL	227	131 : 46graded 52 : 6	19.2%
IntelINTC	216	174 : 20graded 38 : 5	29.6%
SanDiskSNDK	209	167 : 27graded 59 : 7	9.3%
CredoCRDO	200	161 : 17graded 57 : 4	14.8%

Meta was the most-mentioned stock of the month and its bullish share rose from 60% in August to 77%. Eight of the nine finished September higher. The exception is Credo, down 15% on a 57-to-4 graded room, the same open bet we flagged on the semiconductor stocks list. A bullish room on a falling stock is a position that has not paid yet, and we count it that way.

The most bearish stocks right now

The names with 60 or more September mentions where bears outnumbered bulls, or came close:

	Mentions	Bull : Bear	Price
NikeNKE	243	64 : 131graded 1 : 1	5.8%
LululemonLULU	144	43 : 72graded 5 : 4	16.4%
McDonald'sMCD	93	27 : 55graded 1 : 1	10.7%
Novo NordiskNVO	71	20 : 41graded 0 : 0	14.6%
StrategyMSTR	70	19 : 32graded 3 : 3	18.2%
OracleORCL	209	78 : 97graded 22 : 5	11.1%
RedditRDDT	77	32 : 34graded 0 : 4	3.2%
TeslaTSLA	195	82 : 81graded 10 : 2	2.9%

Five names drew more than 60% bearish calls. Four of them, Nike, Lululemon, McDonald's and Novo Nordisk, finished the month lower. Lululemon's bears arrived on September 3, the day after it guided below expectations, and they stayed: the bearish lean held for the rest of the month as the stock kept falling. Nike's bears spent the month on the product and the brand.

Two rows cut the other way. The fifth name, Strategy (MSTR), drew 32 bears to 19 bulls and rose 18%. Oracle's crowd leaned bearish while its graded accounts were 22 to 5 bullish, and the stock fell 11%, so on that one the graded room was the side that has not paid. The graded column is thin on most of this table: the accounts with long records talk far more about chips than about sneakers and burgers. The bearish read here is a crowd read.

What changed since August

• Warmer: Meta (60% bullish in August to 77% in September), AMD (65% to 81%), Intel (75% to 90%), SanDisk (73% to 86%).
• Cooler: Tesla (65% to 50%), Robinhood (85% to 60%), Reddit (61% to 48%), and the consumer names above.
• Louder: Meta tripled its mention count. Energy mentions went from 253 to 666, most of it the one refiner account.
• Quieter: Nvidia's mentions halved, from 1,037 in August to 481, with the bullish share unchanged at 74%.

For the full ranking of who got talked about, see the most mentioned stocks, updated weekly.

How we measure stock market sentiment

We count every call the accounts we track made on a named company in the month: posts on X, Reddit threads, Substack notes, Korean investor blogs, insider filings and Congress trades. Each call is read as bullish, bearish or neutral; the share above is bullish calls out of all calls that took a side. Graded accounts are the ones with more than ten resolved calls and most of them right. The sector split follows the classification in our database. If you want to know what a single number like this can and cannot tell you before you act on it, start with long-term investing and market sentiment.

Where to check sentiment between editions

The next edition lands in November. Between now and then, the Quantral app shows the same reading for any stock you follow, updated every day, with each call behind the score and the record of the account that made it.

Mention counts cover the accounts Quantral tracks, September 1 to 30, 2026, and August 1 to 31 for comparisons; the chart runs September 1 to 29. Price moves are the August 31 close to the September 28 close. Graded accounts have more than ten resolved calls, most of them right. Positions attributed to accounts are their views, not Quantral's. Nothing here is financial advice or a recommendation to buy or sell.