Reading a name
Phase, extension, movement, true peers, is the move early, stretched, or fading?
Line by line
Signal, the chart ribbon's current state. ▲ Strength run is confirmed leadership, still active, the state a long line is posted from. ▲ cooling means the run has gone quiet: paused, not reversed. ▼ Weakness is confirmed underperformance: read as avoid, unless the name is already deeply discounted, where the same mark reads bounce risk: washed-out names snap back more often than they keep falling. No signal is information too.
Phase, velocity. Which way relative strength is moving right now, for how long, at what weekly pace. Accumulation is money flowing in; Distribution is money leaving.
Extension, position. How far the name is stretched above or below its normal range against the market. Very Extended, Fair, Deep Discount, a level, never a direction.
"Very Extended means chase risk" turned out to be true in one tape and false in another. We replayed fresh Strength runs by their extension at the start. In a trending tape the already-stretched names carried the edge, Very Extended starts earned about +2% over the market in three weeks while early-move starts earned nothing. In the 2022 grinding bear it was the mirror: stretched starts were the worst cohort and discounted starts the best. So read Extension through the tape: chase strength when the tape is trending; in a grind or dislocation, avoid the stretched names and look where the discount is. The trade line's "why it qualified" says which case you are in.
Movement, the name's character. The bar's length is how much it moves day to day (0–100 from recent volatility; the row translates it into a typical daily swing, so 60 reads as about ±2.7% a day, the market itself sits near 20). The blue share inside is how much of that movement the market explains; the amber remainder is the stock's own story. Two names with the same score can be opposites: a mostly-amber mover carries stock-specific risk and reward, a mostly-blue one rides the tape. That contrast is hedging fuel. One trap: this measures day-to-day co-movement, not chart shape. Two charts that both climb for months can still be strangers day to day, and daily wiggles are what a hedge actually cancels.
Earnings, the next confirmed report date, and E marks on the chart for past ones. Signals through an earnings gap are suspect for a couple of sessions; the trade line notes an earnings date inside its window.
Benchmark, what everything is measured against. A tech stock is judged against Technology (XLK); a sector against the market.
✦ Read, Phase and Extension combined into one plain verdict. Every verdict it can produce is decoded below.
Why Phase and Extension are not contradictory
A car doing 80 (Phase) can be in the middle of the road or at the cliff edge (Extension). Speed and position are different facts; the trade lives in the combination.
Extension: Very Extended
→ ✦ Late-stage strength, still being bought, but the rubber band is taut.
The combinations
Accumulation + Fair, healthy advance. Strength with room to run: the cleanest long.
Accumulation + Discount, early recovery. Being bought off washed-out levels; often the best risk/reward and the least obvious on a price chart.
Accumulation + Extended, late-stage strength. Momentum favours holders; fresh entries are chasing. In a trending tape this still tested well; elsewhere, hold with a plan and do not initiate.
Distribution + Extended, topping risk. Stretched and being sold: the trim-or-exit combination.
Distribution + Discount, capitulation zone. Weak and washed out. Too late to short; watch for the base instead.
Flat + Extended, stalled at the highs. No push, no break. Whoever moves first wins.
Watch out
True peers
Under every stock's ticket sits a row of peer chips: the names this stock actually moves with, measured from day-to-day co-movement after the market's influence is taken out. That is what makes them true. A category list calls everything in Technology a peer of everything else in Technology; measurement disagrees: a cybersecurity name travels with other cybersecurity names, not with chipmakers, and real peers can sit in different sectors. Cross-sector peers are marked ◆.
The green depth is the strength: a solid chip is an exceptionally tight co-mover, mid green is tight, a faint tint is moderate. Some names show none: they trade to their own beat. Click any chip to overlay that peer on the chart, where the spread lane and the hedge check take over. Relationships are re-measured every trading day, and the trade line's detail shows the name against its true peers' Alpha so you can see whether it is leading its own crowd.
Drivers: sectors and the index
Open a sector and the same box becomes Drivers: the members whose day-to-day moves actually explain the fund's, with an approximate share beside each. This is measured from co-movement, not copied from a holdings sheet, so it answers a slightly different question than the published weights: who really swings the fund day to day. A distinctive mover gets full credit; near-twins that always move together share it. The top of the list will match the issuer's sheet; the disagreements are usually the interesting part.
On SPY the box reads Moves with the index: the names whose daily moves track the index most closely across the universe. They are the tape's bellwethers, and when one starts pulling away from the index that divergence is information about the name, in our testing a coupled name breaking upward kept going, and a coupled name lagging a rising tape was a warning, not a bargain.