Operator's Manual

Line by line

Signal — the chart ribbon's current state. ▲ Strength run = engine-confirmed leadership, still active. ▲ cooling = the run's gone quiet — paused, not reversed. ▼ Weakness = confirmed underperformance; read as avoid — unless the name is already deeply discounted, where the same mark reads as bounce risk (washed-out names snap back more often than they keep falling). No signal is information too: no edge either way.

Phase — velocity. Which way relative strength is moving right now, how long it's run, at what weekly pace. Accumulation = money flowing in; Distribution = money leaving.

Extension — position. How far the name is stretched above or below its normal range vs the market. Very Extended, Fair, Deep Discount… a level, never a direction.

"Very Extended = chase risk" turned out to be a tape-conditional truth, not a law. 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: momentum continuation. In the 2022 grinding bear it was the exact mirror — stretched starts were the worst cohort and discounted starts the best (bounce plays). 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.

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 roughly ±2.7% a day; the market itself sits near 20); the blue share inside is how much of that movement the broad 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 largely rides the tape. That contrast is hedging fuel — pair a storyteller with something market-shaped and the market leg cancels, leaving the story. One trap to avoid: this measures day-to-day co-movement, not chart shape. Two charts that both climb for months can still be strangers day to day — shared drift isn't shared wiggles, 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 panel keeps the date in front of you so you're never surprised.

Benchmark — what everything is measured against. A tech stock is judged vs Technology (XLK); a sector vs the market.

✦ Read — the panel combining Phase × Extension into one plain-language verdict. Every verdict it can produce is decoded in The combinations below.

Why Phase and Extension aren't contradictory

A car doing 80 mph (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.

The combinations

Accumulation + Fair — healthy advance. Strength with room to run: the cleanest long setup.

Accumulation + Discount — early recovery. Being bought off washed-out levels; often the best risk/reward, least obvious on a price chart.

Accumulation + Extended — late-stage strength. Momentum favors holders; fresh entries are chasing. Hold with a trailing plan, don't initiate.

Distribution + Extended — topping risk. Stretched and being sold — the trim/exit combination.

Distribution + Discount — capitulation zone. Weak and washed out. 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 stripped out. That's 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 — airlines, cruise lines and booking sites often move as one travel trade. Cross-sector peers are marked ◆.

The green depth is the strength: a solid chip is an exceptionally tight co-mover, a mid green is tight, a faint tint is moderate. Some names show none at all — that's information too: they trade to their own beat. Click any chip to overlay that peer on the chart, where the pair spread and hedge check take over. Relationships are re-measured every trading day.

Drivers — sectors and the index

Open a sector and the same box becomes Drivers: the members whose day-to-day movements actually explain the fund's, with an approximate share next to each. This is measured, not copied from a holdings sheet — we work it out from how the fund and its members move together, and it answers a slightly different question than the fund company's published weights. A name earns its share here by contributing identifiable movement: a distinctive mover gets full credit, while near-twins that always move together end up sharing it, and the shares are expressed over the names we cover. So the percentages won't match the issuer's sheet exactly — the top of the list will, and the disagreements are usually the interesting part: they tell you who really swings the fund day to day.

On SPY the box reads Moves with the index — the names whose daily moves track the index most closely across the whole universe. Useful in both directions: they're the tape's bellwethers, and when one of them 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). Click any chip to overlay it, as everywhere.