Macro Health

Markup

The index is trending up and drawdowns have historically been shallow in this state.

Phase	Markup
Confidence	50%
SPY	772.64
VIX	15.32

Confirmed uptrend: price broke above the trading range with breadth expanding alongside (Sign of Strength). Aggressive allocation supported.

This bar measures turbulence, not opportunity. Brown Bear replayed its own phase ladder over 2,460 sessions and found it is rank-inverted against forward return — the calmest state (Markup) produced the weakest subsequent 60-day returns, and the most turbulent (Markdown) the strongest. The ladder orders drawdown correctly and return backwards, so a full bar means conditions have been calm, not that returns are likely to be good.

BULL score 4 of ±4

Leg	State	Reading
Trend	Above Rising	SPY 772.62 vs 200-day 701.22
	SPY against its 200-session average, and whether that average is itself rising over 21 sessions. Trend is the workhorse of this composite.
Breadth	Broad	RSP/SPY 0.2855 vs 100-day 0.2845
	Equal-weight S&P (RSP) against cap-weight (SPY). Below its own 100-session average means a narrow market — gains concentrated in fewer names. Weakest leg — 0.427pp standalone. The third time breadth has come out near-inert in this layer.
Volatility term structure	Normal	VIX3M/VIX 1.236 (threshold 1.00)
	Three-month VIX against spot VIX. Below 1.0 is backwardation: the market is pricing more risk now than in three months. Strongest leg by a distance — 3.968pp standalone, and the only economically-grounded threshold in the set.
Credit	Risk On	HYG/IEF 0.8559 vs 100-day 0.8428
	High-yield credit (HYG) against Treasuries (IEF). Below its 100-session average means credit is being sold relative to safety. Credit. The leg the literature suggests should detect recoveries.

The four legs are not equally evidenced. Volatility term structure carried 3.968pp standalone; breadth carried 0.427pp and is the third instance of breadth coming out near-inert in this layer. The composite is reported unweighted because that is how it was preregistered and tested — not because the legs are equally informative.

This composite separates drawdown, not return, and its increment is era-weighted (+1.214pp in the earlier era against +0.196pp in the later one). Treat it as a description of conditions, not a forecast.

BULL for 71 sessions

Window	2023-08-14 → 2026-08-11 (735 sessions)
Regime changes	56 (18.7 per year)
Time in Bull	79.7% (586 sessions)
Time in Mid	19.3% (142 sessions)
Time in Bear	1.0% (7 sessions)

The series ends where the composite last had all four legs defined, which is governed by the slowest feed rather than by the market.

A long run in one bucket is not evidence that it will continue, and the distribution above is a description of this three-year window, not a base rate. Bull dominates because the window does.

Low 0.100 average pairwise

Names	30
Pairs	435
Window	60 sessions

Selection edge historically inverts as correlation rises: the top-versus-bottom decile spread ran +0.246pp in LOW-correlation states and −0.547pp in HIGH. Direction is well determined; the magnitude is not.

Computed from the closing series already stored for the covered universe, so it costs no additional market-data requests.

• Everything here describes conditions, not opportunity. Both the phase ladder and the composite were validated on drawdown separation. Neither predicts returns, and the phase ladder runs backwards against them.
• No deployment advice is shown. The engine's own cap ladder is rank-inverted against forward return, and the research licenses flattening it toward neutral — never inverting it. Publishing a cap here would pass on a number its own author distrusts.
• Breadth is included but weak. It is in the composite because the preregistration put it there, and it is labelled as the weakest leg because that is what the test found.

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