Consensus Divergence Signal (CDS)

What it measures

CDS measures disagreement between two audiences:

• Higher-credibility communities (often earlier, more disciplined signal).
• Broader low-credibility communities (often noisier, later signal).

This makes CDS a contrarian indicator. It highlights moments when "smart money style" communities and the broader crowd are moving in different directions.

Inputs

CDS uses:

• Daily community sentiment for the ticker.
• Community trust scores.

Communities are split into two pools:

• Elite pool: high trust score.
• General pool: low trust score.

Middle-tier communities are left out on purpose so the contrast is cleaner.

How it is computed

1. Compute average sentiment in the elite pool.
2. Compute average sentiment in the general pool.
3. Subtract general from elite.
4. Clamp the result to the range -1 to +1 for stability.

Formula (conceptually):
CDS = elite average sentiment - general average sentiment

Output + interpretation

CDS ranges from -1 to +1:

• Positive CDS: elite communities are more bullish than the crowd.
• Negative CDS: elite communities are more bearish than the crowd.
• Near zero: both groups are broadly aligned.

Edge cases/default behavior

CDS uses safe fallbacks when data is thin:

• If both pools are missing, CDS returns neutral (0).
• If only one pool has data, the other side defaults to neutral.
• Posts without usable sentiment are ignored.

How Rebuzz uses it

CDS is recalculated daily and fed into the composite Rebuzz score.

It is especially useful when crowd sentiment looks strong but elite sentiment disagrees.