How to read the lead / lag plots

The dashboard shows two related plots for each stock. The daily lead/lag chart uses bar height to show the correlation between sentiment and price returns at each day-offset. The session chart shows the same idea at hourly resolution, comparing the full price path (which includes pre-market and after-hours moves) against the regular-hours-only path. A positive offset means sentiment leads price; a negative offset means sentiment reacts to price. Below is what each plot looks like in the basic cases, plus the important case where the two plots seem to disagree.

Each bar carries two separate signals

A common point of confusion: on the daily chart a bar's horizontal position and its color mean two different things. Reading them together is the whole skill.

Position = timing

Where the tallest bars sit left-to-right. Bars to the right of zero mean sentiment leads (it moved first, price followed later). Bars to the left of zero mean sentiment reacts (price moved first, the crowd responded after). This answers “which came first?”

Color = direction

Whether sentiment and price move the same way or opposite ways. Green = positive correlation (bullish sentiment goes with a price rise). Red = negative correlation (bullish sentiment goes with a price fall). This answers “same direction, or opposite?”

Because these are independent, the same chart can show green bars on one side and red on the other. That is not a glitch: it means the relationship changes sign depending on the timing. The four combinations each tell a different story:

How to read any bar, by its position and color
	Green (same direction)	Red (opposite direction)
Right of 0 sentiment leads	Leads & predicts. Bullish sentiment today precedes a price rise later. The hoped-for “sentiment is an early signal” case.	Leads, but contrarian. Bullish sentiment today precedes a price drop later. The crowd’s forward bets are wrong-signed — a fade-the-hype pattern.
Left of 0 sentiment reacts	Reacts, chases. Price rose first, then sentiment turned bullish. The crowd is chasing a move that already happened.	Reacts, fades. Price rose first, then sentiment turned bearish. The crowd fades the move after the fact.

So the “green on the left, red on the right” pattern (or its mirror) simply means the crowd behaves one way before a move and the opposite way after it. On thin data these patterns are mostly noise, and a single earnings gap can flip the whole picture — which is exactly why the dashboard lets you exclude earnings windows (see below).