The models

A confluence model scores several independent technical measures and only tilts bullish or bearish when enough of them agree. Rather than leaning on any one indicator, it waits for five of seven.

The inputs span the long-term trend (200-day), momentum oscillators (RSI, MACD), trend strength (ADX), the prevailing volatility regime, a cross-asset momentum rank and a statistical filter. Agreement across measures that do not usually move together is what firms up the read.

• Price relative to the 200-day moving average sets the directional lean.
• RSI and MACD gauge momentum; ADX gauges whether a trend is actually present.
• A volatility-regime check keeps the read in context with the backdrop.
• A position opens only when five of the seven checks agree.

The high-conviction read is deliberately rare. It runs the confluence checklist with a macro overlay on top and needs six of the eight to line up, which happens on the order of once a year.

Because the conditions align infrequently, it favours precision over frequency. Most weeks it reads neutral, and that is the design.

• All seven confluence checks, plus the recession count as a macro gate.
• The VIX-based regime must not be risk-off.
• Levels come from price structure at entry, not a fixed distance.
• Nothing opens unless six of the eight line up.

Two mean-reversion reads. On the Nasdaq, sharp VIX spikes tend to overshoot; the model reads the panic as stretched and leans toward a snap-back. On silver, extremes in the gold to silver ratio tend to normalise.

Mean reversion is the mirror image of trend-following. The edge is in defining the extreme and the turn precisely, and in accepting that extremes can persist.

• Nasdaq: a VIX spike well above its 20-day average flags a stretched market.
• Silver: the ratio at a one-year z-score extreme flags a reversion candidate.
• Each read exits when its trigger normalises rather than at a fixed target.
• Both are rare by design and run on Elite.

Bitcoin is read as a pure trend-follower. The model tracks breakouts of a Donchian channel, a new high over a lookback window, as a bullish lean, and turns cautious when the trend reverses.

A funding-rate filter flags breakouts that occur when perpetual-futures funding is stretched, which historically marked crowded, reversal-prone conditions.

• A close above the upper Donchian channel reads as bullish momentum.
• A close below the lower channel reads as a trend that has turned.
• Stretched funding rates flag an over-extended market and temper the read.
• The model runs at half size, with a time stop.

Sitting behind every read is an eleven-indicator recession model: six coincident indicators answering "are we in it now", and five leading indicators answering "is one coming". Each month it counts how many are flashing and reads the result on a single dial.

US downturns drive global risk-off, so this reading gates the high-conviction model and frames every other read on the platform. The full rule set is on the recession diffusion index page.

• 0 to 2 active indicators: healthy expansion.
• 3 to 4 active indicators: warning, a risk-off tilt.
• 5 or more: the threshold that has marked every US recession since the 1970s in the backtest.
• Built entirely from free, public Federal Reserve (FRED) data.