Going from no sentiment to a bullish read used to be able to *lower* the composite:
sentiment was blended into the weighted average as an absolute level, so a bullish
75 diluted a ticker already scoring 78. That's backwards for a directional signal.
Now the non-sentiment dimensions form a re-normalized weighted-average base, and
sentiment is applied as a signed adjustment around neutral (50):
composite = clamp(base + MAX_ADJ * (sentiment - 50) / 50)
MAX_ADJ = sentiment weight * 100 (default weight 0.10 → ±10)
Neutral leaves the base unchanged, bullish adds and bearish subtracts (scaled by
confidence, since a 50%-confidence call maps to 50 → no effect), and no sentiment
never penalises. Default sentiment weight 0.15 → 0.10; the weight now means "max ±
points." Composite breakdown exposes base_score/sentiment_score/sentiment_adjustment,
and the ScoreCard shows "Base 78 · sentiment +5.0" plus the per-dimension adjustment.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>