Financial Sentiment Analysis (FSA) is a critical domain application of sentiment analysis that has gained significant attention in recent years. FSA research can be categorized into two main streams: the first stream focuses on defining tasks and developing techniques for FSA, aiming to improve performance through advanced methods and curated human-annotated datasets. The second stream focuses on using financial sentiment for downstream applications in financial markets, such as hypothesis testing and predictive modeling. This survey provides a comprehensive review of FSA research, covering both the technique and application areas, and proposes frameworks to understand the interactive relationship between these two aspects. The article defines the scope of FSA studies, conceptualizes the relationship between FSA, investor sentiment, and market sentiment, and discusses major findings, challenges, and future research directions. Key contributions include a detailed review of recent FSA studies, linking techniques and applications, and providing structured summaries of technical trends, tasks, features, and applications. The survey also highlights the dynamic interplay between FSA techniques and their practical applications, facilitating better adoption of financial sentiment in downstream tasks.Financial Sentiment Analysis (FSA) is a critical domain application of sentiment analysis that has gained significant attention in recent years. FSA research can be categorized into two main streams: the first stream focuses on defining tasks and developing techniques for FSA, aiming to improve performance through advanced methods and curated human-annotated datasets. The second stream focuses on using financial sentiment for downstream applications in financial markets, such as hypothesis testing and predictive modeling. This survey provides a comprehensive review of FSA research, covering both the technique and application areas, and proposes frameworks to understand the interactive relationship between these two aspects. The article defines the scope of FSA studies, conceptualizes the relationship between FSA, investor sentiment, and market sentiment, and discusses major findings, challenges, and future research directions. Key contributions include a detailed review of recent FSA studies, linking techniques and applications, and providing structured summaries of technical trends, tasks, features, and applications. The survey also highlights the dynamic interplay between FSA techniques and their practical applications, facilitating better adoption of financial sentiment in downstream tasks.