Long MRK, short ABBV, same sector: $1 of MRK against $1.32 of ABBV, sized so that a typical day moves each leg by about the same amount. The spread is -21.5% over the last 120 sessions, -3.8% over the last 20, and today's level sits at the 3rd percentile of its own path, deeply compressed, narrowing over the last ten sessions. Alpha 43 against 73, a gap of -30 points (-26 ten sessions ago). Net market exposure at this sizing: +0.03, a clean relative bet. The two are tight peers on the desk's own test.
Not on the desk's list as of Nov 10, three sessions behind. Pro sees today's list.
The last 10 times these two sat this far below their one-year average, 2 closed half the gap within ten sessions: a spread that has tended to keep going. No hand-off in view: neither leg is where a cycle pair starts.
One line of your account split $1 : $1.32 across the legs at the last close (MRK $146.70, ABBV $294.81); fractions included. Arithmetic on a setting you choose, not a recommendation.
The house book has not closed a trade in this pair.
The house takes every listed cycle pair by the rules, after average trading costs; its full record is on the engine page. Pairs you assemble yourself are ideas, not posted trades: the Hedge pairs chapter says how the two differ.
Each leg against its sector fund, and each leg's true peers.
How to read it: the spread is what $1 long MRK and $1.32 short ABBV would have made together, in percent of the long leg, close to close, before costs; the market's move cancels in it to the extent the two legs share it. Stretch is where today's level sits among the last 120 sessions of that path, a description of the spread's own history and not a forecast. Net β is the pair's remaining market exposure per $1 long at this sizing (each leg's beta over 250 sessions). The pages for MRK and ABBV carry each leg on its own.