The DoubleTrends™ Regime Indicator
A rules-based classification of U.S. equity market stress. Each trading day, the S&P 500 is assigned one of four regimes — calm, correction, panic or bear. A reversal signal can only fire when the market is under stress. We publish the indicator, its methodology and its full record as research.
Stress is classified before any signal is considered
Most selling is routine. The indicator first works out what kind of market it’s looking at, and the reversal signal only comes into play when that market is under acute or persistent stress.
| Regime | Definition (summary) | Signal eligibility | Share of sessions | Episodes | Median episode (sessions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calm | Low implied volatility relative to its own trailing year. Selloffs are treated as noise. | Not eligible | 32.0% | 178 | 7 |
| Correction | Neither calm nor acute. Contained pullbacks; the default state of a market under mild pressure. | Not eligible | 36.3% | 341 | 4 |
| Panic | An acute decline from a recent high, or volatility in the top of its one-year range. | Eligible — every qualifying reversal | 15.9% | 170 | 2 |
| Bear | A deep, persistent drawdown with repeated oversold readings and macro pressure. Sticky until a material recovery. | Eligible — late-cluster reversals with same-day confirmation only | 15.8% | 3 | 419 |
Share of sessions, episode counts and median episode length over 7,765 trading days since December 29, 1995. An episode is an unbroken run of sessions in the same regime.
- Calm
- Correction
- Panic
- Bear
- Bear episode
- Signal
Weekly closes on a logarithmic scale; the ribbon shows the daily regime. Source: DoubleTrends L.L.C., point-in-time reconstruction from S&P 500, Cboe VIX and Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) series. Readings are back-tested unless they were published on the day. Focus the chart and use the left and right arrow keys to move week by week; hold Shift to move a year at a time.
The most recent signals
Every signal is published with what happened after it, early ones included. The full record since Aug 1998 is on the historical data page.
| Signal date | Regime | S&P 500 close | From 1-yr high | 3 months | 1 year | 2 years | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-01 | Panic | 6,575.32 | −5.8% | +13.8% | Pending | Pending | Back-tested |
| 2025-04-09 | Panic | 5,456.90 | −11.2% | +14.8% | +25.1% | Pending | Back-tested |
| 2025-03-17 | Panic | 5,675.12 | −7.6% | +6.3% | +18.3% | Pending | Back-tested |
| 2022-10-17 | Bear | 3,677.95 | −23.3% | +8.5% | +18.9% | +58.9% | Back-tested |
| 2020-03-26 | Panic | 2,630.07 | −22.3% | +17.3% | +51.1% | +74.0% | Back-tested |
| 2018-12-28 | Panic | 2,485.74 | −15.2% | +14.0% | +29.6% | +50.3% | Back-tested |
S&P 500 price return from the signal-day close to the first close on or after 3 months, 1 year and 2 years later. “Pending” means the return hasn’t matured yet.
What the fee pays for
The rules and the full record are public because the signal was never worth much as a secret. It fires about once a year, in panics and bear markets, when few investors want to buy anything. Knowing the rule is the easy part. Acting on it is the hard part. The firm’s founder acts on it with their own capital.
What subscribers pay for is timing: the reading shortly after each close, and any signal on the day it fires. Delivering that every trading day runs on infrastructure that costs real money to operate, and USD 149 a year is what keeps it going.