How the engine works
A plain-English explanation of the Regime Intelligence framework — what it measures, how it classifies market conditions, and what it cannot do.
What Regime Intelligence does
Markets don't move randomly. They move in regimes — extended periods where the same forces dominate: volatility, credit stress, momentum, and cross-asset correlation. Regime Intelligence detects which regime is active right now, across every asset class, at every timeframe, updated every 30 minutes.
This is not a trading signal. It is a market context layer — a live read on whether conditions favor risk-taking or risk reduction, whether stress is building or easing, whether the current move is noise or a regime shift.
The five regime states
Every asset at every timeframe is classified into one of five states:
Low volatility, positive momentum, normal credit spreads.
Markets functioning healthily. Historical return profiles favor risk-on positioning.
Markets trending higher with moderate stress.
Growth regime active. Risk is being rewarded. Momentum is your friend.
Warning signals emerging.
Volatility rising, credit spreads widening, momentum fading. Not yet crisis — but conditions are fragile. Time to reduce exposure or hedge.
High stress across multiple asset classes simultaneously.
Credit spreads elevated, volatility spiking, momentum reversing. Defensive positioning recommended. Historical precedent suggests further deterioration is more likely than recovery.
Acute systemic stress.
This is 2008, March 2020, the 2022 rate shock. All stress indicators firing simultaneously. Capital preservation is the only priority.
What drives the classification
The engine processes six independent channels of market information, each capturing a different dimension of stress:
Realized and implied volatility across equity (VIX), bond (MOVE), and cross-asset markets. Measures how uncertain markets are about future prices.
High-yield and investment-grade credit spreads (OAS). When companies must pay significantly more to borrow, financial conditions are tightening — a leading signal of economic stress.
Price momentum across assets. Measures whether markets are trending in a clear direction or breaking down.
Peak-to-trough losses across the asset universe. Identifies whether stress is isolated or systemic.
Extreme move detection. Captures crash signals (sudden sharp declines) and melt-up alerts (parabolic rises that often precede reversals).
When assets that normally move independently start moving together, it signals systemic stress. The 2008 crisis was characterized by everything falling simultaneously.
The Composite Regime Score is a weighted combination of all six channels, calibrated against five decades of historical crisis periods.
Multi-timeframe analysis
Regime Intelligence classifies every asset across five timeframes simultaneously: 15-minute, 1-hour, 4-hour, daily, and weekly.
This matters because different forces operate at different speeds. A daily regime can be in Full Storm while the 15-minute regime shows Tailwind — meaning short-term buying pressure within a longer-term crisis. Or the weekly regime can be Clear Skies while the daily drops to Thin Ice — an early warning of deterioration before it shows up in the longer view.
The Timeframe Agreement Score (TAS) measures how aligned the five timeframes are. When all five agree, the signal is high conviction. When they diverge, the situation is transitional — act with caution.
The Multi-Timeframe Signal synthesizes all five readings into a single directional call: Bullish, Cautiously Bullish, Neutral, Cautiously Bearish, or Bearish.
Cross-asset intelligence
No asset exists in isolation. The regime engine monitors 2167 assets simultaneously — US and international equities (including S&P large-cap names), government bonds, credit, gold, oil, industrial metals, currencies, and cryptocurrencies — and uses their collective behavior to classify each individual asset.
When gold, bonds, yen, and Swiss franc all rally simultaneously, that is a flight-to-safety signal that context-adjusts the regime reading for every equity and credit asset in the universe. When high-yield spreads widen at the same time VIX spikes and momentum breaks, the weight of evidence drives a regime downgrade even if the price chart alone looks recoverable.
This cross-asset context is what separates Regime Intelligence from a simple momentum or volatility indicator. Single-asset signals produce too many false positives. The regime framework requires multiple independent channels to confirm before classifying a period as stress or crisis.
Update cadence and data sources
The regime engine runs every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Each run ingests fresh price data, recomputes all six channels, recalculates the Composite Stress Score, and reclassifies every asset at every timeframe.
Equities, ETFs, FX, commodities, crypto
Rates, spreads, inflation, economic indicators
Derived indicators including yield curve spreads, real yields, and proprietary FX stress indices are computed by the engine itself.
The Regime Persistence Score estimates how long the current regime is likely to last based on historical state durations, using a Cox proportional hazard model calibrated to prior cycles.
What this is not
Regime Intelligence does not predict prices. It does not tell you when to buy or sell specific securities. It does not provide investment advice of any kind.
What it provides is context — an evidence-based read on market conditions that helps you ask better questions: Is this a good environment to add risk? Is the stress I'm seeing in my portfolio idiosyncratic or systemic? Is this a dip to buy or the beginning of something worse?
The decisions remain yours. Regime Intelligence just ensures you are making them with more information than the crowd has.
Not financial advice · Regime classifications are for informational purposes only · Full disclaimer