Investors haven’t been this eager to take on risk in over four years. Goldman Sachs’ Risk Appetite Indicator, or RAI, surpassed 1.1 during the week of May 15, reaching its highest level since 2021 and landing in the 99th percentile of all observations since 1991.
To put that in perspective: readings above 1.0 have occurred only about 2% of the time since 1950. Goldman has recorded just six instances of the RAI clearing that threshold since 1991.
The ‘double high’ phenomenon
What makes this particular surge stand out is not just the RAI reading itself, but the combination of signals firing at once. Goldman strategists are calling the current environment a “double high,” a scenario where both the RAI exceeds 1.0 and the equity momentum z-score surpasses 3.0 simultaneously.
That combination hasn’t appeared since the early 2000s.
