All 5 index funds in uptrends
SPY: uptrend since Aug 4 (18 sessions).
- SPY▲
- QQQ▲
- IWM▲
- RSP▲
- IGV▲
Last turn: SPY, Aug 4, downtrend to uptrend.
Average score
Solid uptrend+16 since Aug 26
Bottom line We lean bullish with low confidence over the next week: SPY can clear its $777.88 August closing high if small caps and junk bonds keep holding up as yields rise. IWM falling back below $280 with HYG at new lows would signal the rally is narrowing again, and two straight SPY closes below $762 would end the bullish view.
Read the full narrativePositioning Pressure · Positive readings mean the flow proxies lean bullish and negative readings mean bearish, with labels such as Mild Buying, Buying Building or Strong Selling. The chart splits it into Index Flow and Stock Flow and marks four patterns: Capitulation, Distribution at Highs, Flow Divergence and Broad Activity.
Keep in mind · Despite the product labels, it does not identify institutions or see whether anyone bought or sold. Its inputs are proxies built from price, volume and options data, so Buying and Selling describe the proxies. Its outcomes are graded; no lead over price has been established.
Market regime · Risk-On means most markets moved as if investors were comfortable with risk; Risk-Off means they moved defensively; Mixed means no clear agreement. The history strip also marks Rotation (stocks flat while other markets moved) and Stagflation (gold up, stocks down, a strained yield curve). A day count shows how long the read has held.
Keep in mind · It reads one day's moves, so it can change quickly. When markets disagree, it does not tell you which one will turn out right. It is not a forecast. The US dollar is not currently an input.
Credit signal · Junk bonds are sensitive to risk. When a high-yield bond fund moves in step with stocks, credit is Confirming. When it falls behind, especially while stocks hold up, the label turns to Warning. Advanced view adds the high-yield spread in basis points, for example HY 310bps.
Keep in mind · It is a one-day comparison and can flip often. Credit can lead or lag stocks; a Warning is a prompt to look closer, not a sell signal. The spread series is published with a short delay.
Yield curve (2s10s) · Longer bonds usually pay more than shorter ones, so the curve slopes up. When short-term yields rise above long-term ones, the curve is Inverted. Advanced view shows the 10-year yield minus the 2-year yield, for example 2s10s +45bps.
Keep in mind · Inversion has a long but imperfect record as an early sign of slowdowns, with very uncertain timing. The curve moves slowly and says little about the next few sessions.
Cross-Asset Context · Plain market values, with the day's change where available, showing what other markets are doing next to stocks. Nothing here is scored.
Keep in mind · These are reference values, not signals. Some series arrive late: the dollar index is published weekly, and crude and the credit spread can be a day behind.
FlowScore · FlowScore asks one question: is something out of the ordinary happening in this stock today? Higher scores mean today's trading looks less like the stock's usual day. In our record so far, high scores have been followed by larger than normal moves more often than chance. It does not say which direction.
Trend badge · The badge names the side the stock's trend is held on: Uptrend or Downtrend. While price moves against the trend it adds how far the test has gone: "holding" for a close just across the 21-day average, "tested 1/3" or "tested 2/3" for one or two of the three closes that would turn it, and "new" on the day it turns. Without enough history the badge shows the score and label instead, such as "+42 · BULL LEAN".
Keep in mind · It is non-directional: a high score can come before a drop as easily as a rally. It does not identify who is trading. Index ETFs use an older recipe, so an index score is not directly comparable with a stock's.
What · we score the trend on four components every trading day.
Maturity · how long has the trend held.
Stretch · how far is price from its 21-day average.
Slope · is the average itself rising or falling.
Stack · do multiple timeframes agree.
Output · the four pillars combine into a single Conviction Score (−100 to +100) and a regime label.
Not · not a turn predictor (slow at absolute tops/bottoms), not a buy/sell signal (it's a regime read), and not infallible.
Is · a daily read of which side each index fund's trend is held on. A trend turns only after three straight closes more than 0.25% beyond its 21-day average, so a dip reads as a trend being tested, not broken. Built on trend-following research (Faber, Weinstein, CBOE).
More · read the full methodology.
IWM and RSP in downtrends.
SPY: uptrend since Sep 23 (9 sessions).
Last turn: SPY, Sep 23, downtrend to uptrend.
Context for the trend, not a signal on their own.
| SPY's trend that day | Followed by a 10%+ drop |
|---|---|
| Firm uptrend | 10% |
| Uptrend holding through a dip | 18% |
| Downtrend | 25% |
The side sorts risk, not returns. In the same history, a first close against a trend became a turn about half the time, and a second about three times in four. About a third of new trends turned back within two weeks. These are past rates, not a forecast for today.
Each index fund's trend is read from its close against its 21-day average:
A trend turns only after three straight closes more than 0.25% beyond the average on the other side. Until then it is being tested, not broken.
What · two scores (0 to 100) on the same six factor blocks, smoothed differently.
Pulse · fast read (1 to 3 day). Designed to react to stress within 1 to 2 sessions and stay sticky on greed.
Tide · slow read (10 to 15 day). Structural backdrop; requires multi-day confirmation to change band.
Bands · each score lands in one of five bands. Watch the day counter for how long a band has held, and the cooling or intensifying tag for which way it's moving inside the band.
Divergence Alert · fires when two or more factor blocks disagree (e.g. credit not confirming a rally). Empirically rare and worth attention, but a watch signal, not a sell signal.
Not · not a buy/sell signal (it's a sentiment read), not infallible (hit rates will be published after T+60 days), not CNN's Fear and Greed (built on richer inputs).
Is · a daily composite of credit, vol/dealer, flow, breadth, cross-asset, and curve. Smoothed with asymmetric EMAs so it flips fast on stress and slow on greed. Dealer-aware (GEX, 25Δ skew), which is what CNN's index misses.
Fear readings have tended to start near short-term lows (in a replay of Pulse back to 2008, 64% began near a local S&P 500 low (within about a week and a half), against 29% by chance). This one is well past its start, so that pattern doesn't speak to today, and it has never forecast returns.
From the overnight change in open interest. A put can hedge a holding as easily as bet on a fall, so this shows where traders added positions, not which way they lean.
Today's Flow Leaders · This Signal Lab list shows the five stocks, from everything we track rather than just your watchlist, where today's trading looks least like normal. Each carries a short reason, such as "Move risk led by volume surge", naming the input that pushed its score highest.
FlowScore · FlowScore asks one question: is something out of the ordinary happening in this stock today? Higher scores mean today's trading looks less like the stock's usual day. In our record so far, high scores have been followed by larger than normal moves more often than chance. It does not say which direction.
Move Watch · Move Watch appears when a stock's FlowScore reaches 60. It reads High from 60 to 69 and Extreme at 70 and above. It marks stocks where today's activity is far enough from normal that we treat the risk of a bigger than usual move as elevated. It does not say which way.
Flow trend · Flow Building +12 means the stock's FlowScore is 12 points higher than it was five sessions ago. Flow Surging marks a larger jump from an already active level. Both say attention on the stock is growing; neither says whether the price will rise or fall.
Keep in mind · A ranking of attention, not a list of trades. A stock can lead because of one rare print or a short burst of options activity. It says nothing about direction.
Monday's session, in full
The S&P 500 fund SPY rose 0.67% to $774.83, within 0.4% of its mid-August closing high. The Nasdaq-100 fund QQQ set a fresh high on its fifth straight gain, led by Nvidia, Meta and Microsoft. What stocks rose through matters more. Reuters reported the 30-year Treasury yield touched 5.69% at midday, the highest since 2002. A September survey of service businesses showed its prices gauge at the highest level since July 2022, with fuel costs cited most often.
For a month, rising yields have mostly hurt the parts of the market that depend on cheaper borrowing. Over 20 sessions, small caps (the IWM fund) fell 4.3% and the average S&P stock (RSP, an equal-weighted version) fell 3.6%, while QQQ gained 5.2%. Today both kept pace with SPY. Among the same 135 stocks we track, the share trading above their 21-day average price rose to 44% from 36% on Friday. High-yield bonds (HYG) rose for a second session. That meets the condition we set Friday for challenging our call that small caps would keep lagging: two IWM closes above $280 with HYG off its lows. The margin is thin, though. HYG sits just 8 cents above its October 1 low. The extra yield junk-rated borrowers pay over Treasuries is still about 0.45 percentage point wider than a month earlier, as of Friday.
We are shifting to a cautiously bullish read on the index. Credit has stopped falling, volatility gauges show no near-term stress, and jobless claims remain low. The strongest objection is that this rally still leans on a handful of tech leaders while inflation-adjusted Treasury yields climb, a squeeze the Federal Reserve has not pushed back against. Wednesday's minutes from its September rate-hike meeting and the October 14 inflation report will test that.
Options positioning shows the largest call concentration at $775, right at the close, and puts clustered at $770. These are estimates of where open contracts sit, not guaranteed ceilings or floors.
Session character · It describes how much each index fund may move, not which way. Coil means the next session looks quieter than usual for that fund, and Expand means louder. As the card says: Index character only. Not a direction call.
Keep in mind · Dealer positioning is modeled from open interest, not observed. It says nothing about direction, covers only these three index funds, and single stocks can behave differently.
Index character only. Not a direction call. Single names can diverge.
Ranked prints · We keep a list of each stock's largest single trades over roughly the past decade. When today's trade joins that list, we say where it ranks, for example "3rd-largest in our records". A #1 is the largest single print we have for that stock in the past decade.
Keep in mind · A large print shows size, not intent. We cannot see who traded or whether it was a buy or a sell. A newly tracked stock's prints are ranked only once its ten years of history has been loaded.
VIX term structure · VIX is the volatility options traders price into the S&P 500 over the next 30 days; VIX9D covers 9 days and VIX3M three months. Usually longer horizons price higher (Contango). When short-term volatility prices above longer-term, the curve is Inverted. In the email, a 9D/3M ratio above 1 shows in red.
Keep in mind · It describes how options are priced right now. An inversion can resolve within days or persist through a selloff, and the curve does not say which way the index will move.
Closing Tape Pulse · Many funds trade in the closing auction at 4:00 pm. On a busy day the panel shows how many closes ranked among each stock's largest, the sector with the biggest share, any record closes, and an Index rebalance tag on known rebalance days. Quiet days show one muted line.
Keep in mind · Accumulation and Distribution describe price action around the closing print, not who traded or which side they took; every closing print matches buyers and sellers in equal size. Rebalance-day volume is largely mechanical.
SERVICES-PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE — accumulation, 1 record close
SERVICES-PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE · 94% of closing flow · 1 record close
| Ticker | Sector | Close | Rank | Day % | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TWLO | SERVICES-PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE | #1 all-time | +2.15% | $4.89B | |
| XLU | Unknown | #5 all-time | +0.35% | $125.3M | |
| TOST | SERVICES-COMPUTER PROCESSING & DATA PREPARATION | #5 all-time | +0.84% | $87.9M | |
| XLC | Unknown | #10 all-time | +1.17% | $75.3M | |
| XHB | Unknown | #7 all-time | -0.41% | $12.2M | |
| SVIX | Unknown | #8 all-time | +0.76% | $1.5M |