Sector Split

It sits on the Every Name workspace and carries four tabs. Split reads the same rows as the Market Scan, summed by sector. Rotation, Replay and Heading read each sector fund's own priced history against the S&P 500, from weekly closes. See Rank Not Return for the delay rule on the model half of Split.

At a glance

• What it answers. Which sectors are leaning bullish or bearish tonight, and whether their options are priced rich or cheap.
• What a sector is. A group of companies in the same line of business, such as technology, health care or energy.
• What a row is. One sector. On the left, a strip with a dot for every stock in it. On the right, a heat map of the sector's figures.
• The strip. Each dot sits at the stock's rank at 45 trading days. Bearish stocks to the left, bullish to the right. The shaded ends are the signal zones.
• Dot colour, size and ring. Colour is the measured edge over any stock. Size is options volume tonight. A ring marks a signal.
• The tick. The sector's median rank.
• Bullish and Bearish. How many signals the sector carries tonight on each side.
• Net edge. The measured edge of every stock in the sector, averaged with its sign, in points. Positive is the bullish side, negative the bearish.
• The medians. IV rank, the model's expected move and the pullback chance, each the middle value across the sector's stocks.
• Order. Net edge puts the most bullish sectors first. Signals puts the busiest first. IV rank puts the richest options first.
• Key difference. The strip shows each stock. The grid shows the sector as a whole: counts, medians and one average.

What it shows

The cells are a heat map. Green and red carry direction. The warm and cool ramp carries size only. A dash is a figure no stock in the sector carries.

What a trader uses it for

• Where the signals cluster. A sector with many bullish signals and a positive net edge is where the model's bullish signals sit tonight.
• Rich or cheap. The IV rank column says whether that sector's options are priced high or low against their own year. On Trade Cards, that is what picks a credit structure over a debit one.
• Risk in the sector. The pullback and vol rising columns say how rough the model reads the next 20 trading days.

Key difference. A sector full of signals is not a sector call. Every signal is a single stock, measured on its own.

The Unclassified row

It holds funds, when the ranking carries any. A fund holds a basket of stocks, so no single sector fits it. The desk keeps funds out of every book.

Split

The heat map and rank strip above are the Split tab, the pane's first tab.

Rotation

Where each sector sits against the S&P 500, and which way it is moving. Two readings, both from weekly closes and both centred on 100.

• The horizontal reading. How a sector fund's price against the S&P 500 compares with its own last ten weeks. Above 100 is stronger than its own recent average, below 100 is weaker.
• The vertical reading, momentum. Whether the horizontal reading rose or fell over the last week, also centred on 100. Above 100 means it rose this week, below 100 means it fell.

The chart places every sector by those two readings, with a trail of its last eight weeks. A reader sees which way a sector has been moving, not just where it sits tonight. Four quadrants:

Direction of travel is which way a sector moved this week. Strengthening or weakening, and accelerating or slowing, from the sign of each reading's own one week change.

The table beside the chart carries every sector's quadrant and its direction of travel. It also carries the sector's return against the S&P 500 over the last 1, 4 and 13 weeks. Where the options data carries them, the sector's own fund's IV rank and expected move sit beside those.

Key difference. This is market geometry, not a signal. It says where a sector's own price has been sitting against the index, never what the desk's model expects next.

Replay

The same rotation chart, animated over its whole weekly history. It runs as far back as each sector fund's own listing.

The nine original sector funds reach back to 1998. Two, communication services and real estate, are younger and start when their own funds were listed.

A play, pause and scrub control moves a shared cursor across every week on file. It redraws the chart at that week, with each sector's own eight week trail ending there.

Beneath it, a second picture: a grid of every sector's month over month performance against the S&P 500. The cursor sits over the month the scrubbed week falls in.

Reading down the grid says which sectors led a given month. Reading across says which months a sector led.

Key difference. Rotation shows tonight. Replay shows how tonight's picture was built, one week at a time.

Heading

The honest projection: not a forecast, a measured history. For each sector, where it sits now, its quadrant and its direction of travel. Then how often a spot like that led somewhere, in the past.

Every past week the sector was in its CURRENT quadrant, moving the SAME way, counts as one observation. Of those, the table states the share that were in Leading eight weeks later.

It also states the median of their own return against the S&P 500 over the following eight weeks. Both carry their own count, X. A bucket with a thin count is shown exactly as thin as it is, never rounded up to a claim.

Beside the history, where the data carries them: the sector's own fund's priced move, from its listed options, to about a month out. Tonight's desk signals for the sector sit beside it too, the same bullish and bearish counts the Split tab carries.

Key difference. The share and the median return are a record of what happened after a spot like today's, with a count attached. They are not odds on what happens next, and no figure on this tab is invented.

Frequently asked questions

Why can a sector show signals on both sides? Signals are measured stock by stock. A sector can hold strong and weak names at once, and the strip shows exactly where each one sits. Why is the net edge so small? It averages every stock in the sector, and most sit in the middle of the ranking with no edge. A small figure with many signals means the signals are balanced. What is the fund beside the sector name? The sector's own index fund and its rank at 45 trading days. The model scores it beside the ranking, never in it. Why does Heading show a small count for some sectors? Communication services and real estate funds are younger, so their own history holds fewer past weeks to measure from. A small count is shown as a small count, never rounded up. Is Rotation the model's own read? No. It is arithmetic on published prices, a sector fund's own reading against the S&P 500. The model's signals are on the Split tab.

Related panes

• Market Scan. The same rows, one stock at a time.
• Star Field. The same rows in three dimensions.
• Market Map. Where the options market traded tonight.