Market Conditions

Two words run through this page. The scan is one evening's run over about a thousand shares, ranked top to bottom. The book is the short list RingMaster publishes from that run each evening. One of the panes on Every Name, this screen shows the market conditions the night's book was built under. It draws them as a sky. It moved to Every Name on 2026-07-24. The same reading sits as a small chip in the bar across the top of the desk, so it stays in view whatever layout is open. Open Market Conditions

At a glance

• The question it answers. Was the market calm or turbulent on the night RingMaster's book was built? That is the only question here.
• The label. Each trading day the market gets one of four words: Calm, Normal, Elevated or Stressed. They run from least turbulent to most.
• Where the label comes from. One market reading, the VIX. VIX is what S&P 500 option prices imply about how much prices move up and down over the next month. Nobody at Ohey sets it. It comes from what traders are paying for those options.
• The number on screen. VIX below 15 reads Calm. From 15 up to 20 reads Normal. From 20 up to 28 reads Elevated. At 28 and above it reads Stressed.
• The bullish side and the bearish side. Each evening the scan ranks every name. Bullish means the names it ranks near the top. Bearish means the names it ranks near the bottom.
• The colour of the sky. Greener when more names are bullish. Redder when more are bearish. That count is called breadth.
• Breadth now prints as a number too (2026-09-24). Net bullish minus bearish, by sector, weighted by how many names each sector holds. The sky still carries it as colour and the readout now states it as a percent. Sector Split prints it sector by sector.
• The S&P 500 priced move (2026-09-24). What the S&P 500 fund's own listed options price right now, up and down, to the nearest month. Read off the same figure Market Mood and Breadth Board already state, not a forecast.
• A short options term note (2026-09-24). One line saying whether the S&P 500 fund's own options price higher volatility near term or further out. It is read off those option prices, not the VIX futures term, and says so.
• The dashboard under the sky (2026-09-25). Five tabs: Recession watch, What options price, History, Drivers, and Model and market. Each has a Visual view and a Table one tap away, and the choice is remembered.
• When the sector figures have not loaded. The sky holds neutral. It does not pick a side.
• The movement of the sky. A Calm label barely stirs it. A Stressed one churns it, with storm cells and lightning.
• What it does not do. It describes conditions already measured, not what conditions will be tomorrow.
• When the reading is old, the sky goes grey. The pane would rather look unsure than paint a confident calm sky over a market nobody measured lately. Key difference: colour = how many names are bullish or bearish. Movement = how turbulent the volatility reading was.

What the screen shows

Five things sit at the top of the pane.

• Conditions word. Calm, Normal, Elevated or Stressed.
• VIX value. The volatility reading that word came from.
• VIX range (2026-09-24). Beside the VIX, its low and high over the trading days in the ribbon, for example 14.2 to 19.8, last 20 trading days. A carried forward reading is left out. With fewer than two real readings the slot stays empty.
• Exception line. Usually absent. It appears when the VIX reading is old or missing, and it would read Book withheld tonight if a book were ever withheld.
• Flags. Short warnings the run attached. Here they are about a volatility feed that is old or missing. Under the label, two more figures (2026-09-24): breadth by sector and the S&P 500 priced move, each with its own line. Below them, when the S&P 500 fund has options served for more than one expiry, the short term note. Along the bottom runs a ribbon of recent trading days. One bar per trading day. Bar height follows that trading day's VIX. Bar colour follows that trading day's label. A bar is drawn hollow when the VIX was carried forward from an older reading.

The dashboard under the sky

The sky and its readout are the Now band at the top. Everything below it scrolls, and the pane fills its whole frame at any size. A strip of headline tiles sits above five tabs. Each tile prints a big number, a small line of recent history and what changed since the reading before, with that date. Every figure comes from series the desk holds. Every past frequency prints with its count, and it is history, not a promise. Key difference. The label and the sky describe tonight. The dashboard puts tonight against decades of history.

Recession watch

The documented recession indicators, each drawn over its full history with past recession months shaded.

• Recession odds from the yield curve. The published yield curve model reads the 10 year less 3 month spread and gives odds of a recession within 12 months. Its publisher fitted it on 1959 to 2009. The desk applies it to the spread it holds, so its reading can differ slightly from the publisher's own.
• The 10 year less 3 month curve. Below zero is an inverted curve.
• The Sahm rule. The 3 month average of the unemployment rate less its lowest 3 month average over the prior 12 months. The documented trigger is 0.50.
• The high yield spread. What the weakest borrowers pay over Treasuries, with where tonight sits in its own history.
• Jobless claims. The 4 week average against its own 52 week low.
• Building permits and industrial production. Each against the same month a year earlier.
• At a pre recession level. A reading counts when it is at or past the middle reading of the 12 months before each recession its series covers. The strip says how many indicators sit there tonight.
• The history line. Each card says how many past months sat at that level outside a recession, and after how many a recession began within 12 months.
• Then and now. Pick an indicator. Each faint line is the 24 months before one recession began. The heavy line is the last 25 months.

What options price

• The VIX term. VIX at 9 days, 30 days and 3 months, tonight, a month ago and its median since 2011. The S&P 500 fund's own option prices sit beside it where the desk holds them.
• The implied range. One standard deviation drawn forward from the index's last close, scaled by the square root of time. About 68 in 100 by the options' own pricing.
• VIX against 3 month VIX. Above 1 is backwardation: near term protection costs more than 3 month protection. Weeks above 1 are shaded, with the count.
• VVIX and SKEW. Each against its own history, as a percentile.
• The priced move. The S&P 500 fund's own priced move at the expiry nearest a month.

History

The conditions label drawn over the whole VIX record since 1990, as a colour strip under the index. The cut points are the desk's own: under 15 Calm, under 20 Normal, under 28 Elevated, 28 and over Stressed.

• After each label. On the last trading day of each month, the label that day, then how the index did over the next 21 trading days. Each card gives the months counted, how many ended up, the median and the worst tenth.
• The options seller's figure. In how many months VIX overstated the realized move of the next 21 trading days, and the median gap in points. This is the number an options seller reads first. It is history with its count, not a promise.

Drivers

• What the index is moving with. The 63 trading day correlation of daily returns between the S&P 500 and long Treasury bonds, the US dollar, crude oil, gold and high yield bonds. Each bar sits on its own five year range.
• One sentence names the strongest link tonight.
• Sector dispersion. How far apart the sector funds' 21 trading day returns are. Higher means the sectors moved further apart.

Model and market

• Does the stock model get credit for recession odds? No. The model ranks names against each other. It carries no market label and no recession label, and it was never measured on either.
• What the desk has measured at market level. The one day stress condition: VIX over 20, or the S&P 500 under its own 50 trading day average. Out of fold, the one day read had a record only when it held. The tab says whether it holds tonight and how often it has held since 2010.

What this pane is, and the free plan delay

This pane looks like raw market data, and mostly it is. The VIX value is a number the market set. The colour of the sky is not. It is the scan's own signal on the names it ranked. The pane is built inside the same nightly snapshot as the scan. So on the free plan you see the previous trading day's reading, not tonight's. That is the same delayed trading day the rest of the desk shows. The sky colour is model output. The full delay rule is in Rank Not Return.

The feed is stale right now, and the sky says so

The label is only as good as the reading behind it. Right now that reading is weeks old. The nightly run is describing today's market with a month-old number. So the pane has a second job, and it is the louder one:

• The banner. When the feed is stale, a banner appears at the top. It gives the reading's exact date and its age in days. It reads "last real reading is N days old".
• The sky degrades. Colour bleeds to ash. The field dims. A slow grey haze rolls through and grain settles over everything.
• The reason. The picture is meant to read "I do not know". A bright, calm-looking sky over a month-old reading would be a lie.

No hit rate renders here, at all

This pane publishes no hit rate, success rate or performance figure, and no other pane in the desk does either. There is no setting anywhere in the product that turns one on. The only performance figures Ohey publishes are the paper record on the Record page, labelled paper trading and hypothetical.

The label never changes the book

The conditions label is written down beside the book. It does not change the book. Under the current model the daily book is never withheld. Until 2026-09-24 a gate word sat beside the label and read the same thing every trading day. It told a trader nothing, so it is gone. The slot now carries the VIX range. If a book were ever withheld, the pane would say so in one plain line: Book withheld tonight.

Real world use to a trader

Read the banner first, then the label. Here is what that looks like. The banner says the last real reading is 25 days old. The sky is ash. The label still reads Calm. That Calm belongs to a trading day almost a month back. It is not a description of today. The pane does not change the book in stress. It labels the conditions and nothing else. What you do with that is your job.

Using it with discipline

1. Read the banner before you read the label. A label is only worth as much as the reading behind it. Anything else on the desk that leans on this reading is just as old. Treat it that way.
2. You decide the risk here, not the pane. The desk does not withhold or resize the book in elevated or stressed conditions. A disciplined trader tightens their own risk instead, with smaller position sizes. RingMaster also ranks each name over several lengths of time. Where few of those rankings agree, be more sceptical. Timeframe Agreement is the screen that shows them.
3. Cross-check the colour. The sky's green and red, and the breadth percent now printed under the label, are the same figure Sector Split draws as columns. For each sector the scan works out how bullish or bearish its names are, on a scale of minus one to plus one. The sky averages those figures across the sectors, weighted by how many names each sector holds. If the sky is bearish, the flux board is bearish too. A mismatch means one of them is running on partial data.
4. Do not wait for an accuracy number. There is not one. See the section above. Watch out for these:
5. A confident-looking sky is not a current one. The whole grey-out design exists for that reason. Respect the ash.
6. A stormy sky does not mean the desk pulled risk. The book ships whatever the conditions label says.

Frequently asked questions

What do Calm, Normal, Elevated and Stressed actually mean? Four labels for how turbulent one market volatility reading was, lowest to highest. They describe the conditions the night's book was built under. Why does the sky sometimes look dull, grey or hazy? Because the volatility reading behind it is old, sometimes weeks old. The pane drains the picture on purpose, so a stale reading never looks as trustworthy as a fresh one. The banner at the top says how many days old it is. Does a Stressed reading shrink my book automatically? No. The book publishes exactly as generated, whatever the label. Nothing about your position sizing changes on its own. That judgement is yours. Where is the historical accuracy or hit rate number? There is none. RingMaster publishes no accuracy or hit rate figure, for this pane or any other, on any plan. Is this pane telling me what the market does next? The label and the sky describe a reading already taken. The recession odds are the published yield curve model's reading, labelled as that. The history tabs are past counts, never a promise. See Rank Not Return. Does RingMaster's model get credit for the recession readings? No. The stock model ranks names against each other and carries no market or recession label. The recession readings come from the published indicators. Is the priced move or the term note our own view? No. Both are read straight off the S&P 500 fund's own listed option prices, market data, not RingMaster's model. The term note is not the VIX futures term structure, which the desk does not hold, and says so.

Related panes

• Rank Not Return, which explains what the model panes are and the free plan delay this pane follows.
• Sector Split, the same market breadth this pane paints as sky colour, shown instead as a per-sector board.
• Volatility Weather, how much movement option prices are pricing in. It is a market reading, not one of our models, and it is shown live on every plan.
• Market Mood and Breadth Board, which state the same S&P 500 priced move card this pane now carries too.