S&P 500 Confident ↔ Hedging, Median Company (Company Posture, 0–100)

## What this measures

The median S&P 500 company's reading on Posture's Confident ↔ Hedging axis on the last day of each month, from 0 (hedging) to 100 (confident). For each company the axis reads the sentiment and confidence of its latest earnings call (scored by Discourse), guidance raised against guidance lowered or withdrawn over six months (Guidance Ledger), the share of new risk factors in its latest 10-K, and insider open-market purchases against sales over six months (Form 4).

## Why it matters

In the pre-registered back-test, a lower Confident ↔ Hedging reading added to a naive forecast of a company lowering or withdrawing guidance over the next six months, in both halves of the test period. The effect was small and the test period short (the Guidance Ledger starts in October 2024). The median across the index shows whether management teams as a whole sound surer or more guarded than their own past and their sectors.

## How to read it

50 is the middle of each company's own history and its sector. Because each company is placed partly against its own past, the median stays near the middle and moves when many companies shift together. Guidance changes enter the readings from October 2024 and insider trades from December 2024; earlier months rest on calls and risk factors only, and the series starts in February 2023, the first month-end when at least 70% of members had enough evidence. A month is published only when at least 70% of members have a reading.

## What it does not say

It is not a forecast, a rating or a view on share prices, and it uses no prices. Call sentiment is a language-model score of what management said, not of results. Before 26 September 2026 the stored S&P 500 membership is the current list carried back.

## How it's built

Every input is used only from the day it became public, and month-end readings are never rewritten. Method and test: palanor.com/methodology/posture.

## Source

SEC EDGAR (Forms 8-K, 10-K and 4), earnings-call and release scores from Palanor Discourse, the Palanor Guidance Ledger. Palanor calculation (Posture, method posture-v1). Refreshed by /api/cron/company-posture.