How to read the stages
Every instrument on the dashboard carries one label per timeframe. This is what those labels mean, and exactly how they are computed — the same rules, applied to every instrument, every run.
The four stages
- Stage 1 — accumulation
- Price is below a trend line that has stopped falling. The decline is over; the advance has not started. Historically the least profitable stage to hold and the best one to prepare in.
- Stage 2 — advance
- Price is above a rising trend line. This is where medium-term gains are actually made, and where the model wants to find you positioned.
- Stage 3 — distribution
- Price is above a trend line that has stopped rising. The advance has stalled without having reversed. Ambiguous by nature, which is why the confirmation rule matters most here.
- Stage 4 — decline
- Price is below a falling trend line. No amount of good news about the instrument changes what the tape is doing.
How a stage is decided
Two facts, and nothing else: where price sits relative to a moving average, and whether that moving average is rising, falling or flat. Above and rising is stage 2; above and no longer rising is stage 3; below and still falling is stage 4; below and no longer falling is stage 1.
"Flat" is not zero. A trend line that drifts a fraction of a percent a year is flat in every sense that matters, so each timeframe has a band inside which the slope counts as flat. And a stage does not change on the first bar that crosses: it must hold for a set number of bars before the label moves. That is what stops a single volatile session from rewriting the board.
| Timeframe | Trend line | Slope measured over | Flat band | Confirmation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly — the primary read | 30-bar moving average | 4 bars | 3% a year | 2 bars |
| Daily — the early warning | 50-bar moving average | 10 bars | 5% a year | 3 bars |
| Monthly — the backdrop | 30-bar moving average | 3 bars | 2% a year | 1 bars |
The parameters live in config.json and this page is generated from them, so what
you read here is what the model actually ran.
What it does not tell you
A stage is a description of the tape, not a forecast and not a recommendation. It does not know what you own, what you can afford to lose, or when you need the money. Instruments that have traded for too few bars to have a meaningful trend line are marked as young rather than guessed at.
Horizon
The whole system is built for a medium-term horizon of roughly 26 weeks. Reading a weekly stage as a cue to trade this afternoon is a misuse of it.