274
Opinion of the Court
dent judges and local law enforcement officers). Although an officer's reliance on a mere " 'hunch' " is insufficient to justify a stop, Terry, supra, at 27, the likelihood of criminal activity need not rise to the level required for probable cause, and it falls considerably short of satisfying a preponderance of the evidence standard, Sokolow, supra, at 7.
Our cases have recognized that the concept of reasonable suspicion is somewhat abstract. Ornelas, supra, at 696 (principle of reasonable suspicion is not a " 'finely-tuned standar[d]' "); Cortez, supra, at 417 (the cause "sufficient to authorize police to stop a person" is an "elusive concept"). But we have deliberately avoided reducing it to " 'a neat set of legal rules,' " Ornelas, supra, at 695-696 (quoting Illinois v. Gates, 462 U. S. 213, 232 (1983)). In Sokolow, for example, we rejected a holding by the Court of Appeals that distinguished between evidence of ongoing criminal behavior and probabilistic evidence because it "create[d] unnecessary difficulty in dealing with one of the relatively simple concepts embodied in the Fourth Amendment." 490 U. S., at 7-8.
We think that the approach taken by the Court of Appeals here departs sharply from the teachings of these cases. The court's evaluation and rejection of seven of the listed factors in isolation from each other does not take into account the "totality of the circumstances," as our cases have understood that phrase. The court appeared to believe that each observation by Stoddard that was by itself readily susceptible to an innocent explanation was entitled to "no weight." See 232 F. 3d, at 1249-1251. Terry, however, precludes this sort of divide-and-conquer analysis. The officer in Terry observed the petitioner and his companions repeatedly walk back and forth, look into a store window, and confer with one another. Although each of the series of acts was "perhaps innocent in itself," we held that, taken together, they "war-ranted further investigation." 392 U. S., at 22. See also Sokolow, supra, at 9 (holding that factors which by them-
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