A composite sentiment score solves the "too many dashboards" problem. Rather than reading Reddit sentiment, news tone, and search interest separately, you collapse them into one number — typically normalised to a 0-to-1 scale where higher is more bullish — that is directly comparable across tickers.
The value of a composite is in the weighting. Sources are not equally reliable: news tone can be slow, social sentiment can be manipulated, and search interest can spike on unrelated events. A good composite down-weights noisy or thin sources and up-weights corroboration across independent inputs.
On Sintinel, the composite is the headline number on every ticker page and the backbone of the BUY / HOLD / SELL signal. Because it aggregates the most recent reads from each source, it updates intraday as new posts and articles are scored.
Treat the composite as a starting point for research, not a trade ticket. A high score tells you conviction is bullish; the source breakdown tells you whether that conviction is broad-based or concentrated in one crowded source.