A CEO sentiment index measures how confidently the chief executives of listed companies talk about their business, scored from the words they publish themselves. Ours, the Clarifo CEO Barometer, puts each CEO review on a 0-100 scale, and for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 it stood at 61 across 606 companies, in the positive band.
We publish the CEO Barometer alongside our financial data for US and Nordic listed companies. This article sets out what the CEO Barometer reads, how a score is built and checked, and how to read the latest numbers without over-reading them.
What the CEO sentiment index reads, and what it leaves out
The source is the CEO review in each interim and annual report. For US companies it is the letter to shareholders in the earnings release. Nothing comes from news, interviews or social media, so every score traces back to a text the company published and signed.
The CEO Barometer covers companies on Nasdaq Helsinki, Nasdaq Stockholm and Nasdaq Copenhagen and the S&P 500, added as they report. It describes tone. It does not predict share prices, and a high score is not a judgement on the company's results.
Six themes combine into one 0-100 CEO tone score
Every company is scored on the same six themes, so a CEO who stays silent on demand is scored on demand too. The cards below group them by what they capture.
Confidence and Demand
How sure the CEO sounds about the business, and how they describe customer demand and order flow.
Profitability and Growth ambition
What the CEO says about margins and earnings, and how actively they talk about growing the business.
Directness and Ownership
How plainly the CEO states the message, and how clearly they take ownership of the result.
The six theme readings combine into one index from 0 to 100. The bands are fixed:
| Index | Band |
|---|---|
| 57–100 | Positive |
| 28–56 | Neutral |
| 0–27 | Negative |
Source: Clarifo CEO Barometer methodology, clarifo.com/ceo-barometer/about.
The anchor is 50, the average tone of Nordic companies in 2020-2023. It is not a neutral midpoint or a percentage. US scores, which come from letters to shareholders rather than CEO reviews, are adjusted down.
How each reading is checked before it is published
- AI-assisted reading. The reviews are read with AI assistance (Clarifo Intelligence), using the same method for every company.
- Quotes verified word for word. Any quote shown as evidence for a theme is checked against the report text.
- A second, independent reading. Each review is read twice, and disagreements between the two readings are flagged.
- Provisional, then confirmed. A period stays provisional while companies are still reporting, and is confirmed once the season is in.
- Versioned method. When the method changes, the version changes, so old and new readings are not mixed silently.
The latest reading: Q2 2026 at 61
The table shows the CEO Barometer for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, the latest confirmed period, by market and in total.
| Market | Companies | Index | Change vs Q1 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States (S&P 500) | 483 | 63 | +3 |
| Nasdaq Helsinki | 69 | 56 | +6 |
| Nasdaq Stockholm | 53 | 55 | -1 |
| All markets | 606 | 61 | +3 |
Source: Clarifo CEO Barometer, period ended 30 June 2026, status confirmed; 606 of the 1,352 companies covered had reported (45%). One Nasdaq Copenhagen company is included in the total.1
Of the 606 reviews, 375 scored positive, 201 neutral and 30 negative. The all-market index read 57 for the quarter ended 30 September 2025 and 59 for Q4 2025, before the Q2 2026 reading of 61.
US rows come from letters to shareholders and Nordic rows from CEO reviews, so a US 63 and a Helsinki 56 are not a like-for-like gap. For a trend, use the constant-composition series: for a fixed group of 10 US companies it moved from 53 in Q1 2026 to 56 in Q2 2026.
Reading one company score: KONE and Applied Materials
A single company reading shows how the parts fit. KONE Oyj (Nasdaq Helsinki: KNEBV) scored 89 for Q2 2026, up 41 points from Q1 2026 and 22 points from Q2 2025, ranking 13th of 606 companies.2 The reading links to page 4 of KONE's half-year report, where the CEO review sits, so anyone can open the text and judge the tone for themselves. On the US side, Applied Materials, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMAT) scored 91, fourth of 606, up 68 points from Q2 2025. The company figures behind those reviews sit on each company page.
In Claude or ChatGPT, our read-only MCP app returns the same readings:
Using Clarifo, show the CEO Barometer for the latest confirmed quarter by market and sector, and KONE's reading with its change from the previous quarter. Explain the scale before you compare anything.
For how the Barometer fits into a wider research workflow, see how to use Clarifo in Claude for company research.
See the latest CEO Barometer by market, sector and company, with a link to every review behind the score.
- Clarifo CEO Barometer, period ended 30 June 2026 (confirmed), market, distribution and trend readings, retrieved 28 October 2026: clarifo.com/ceo-barometer. Methodology: clarifo.com/ceo-barometer/about.
- KONE Oyj, Interim report January–June 2026, CEO review, p. 4: report page; scored in the CEO Barometer for Q2 2026.
Not investment advice. Figures are based on data reported by the companies.