The Monotonicity Divide
Quantifying Trend Integrity in a Bifurcated Market
A follow-up to “When the Sky Confirms What the Analysts Are Afraid to Say”
Beyond Analyst Sentiment
The last piece published here was not a quiet market note. It was a convergence — a chart, a military intelligence analyst named Charlie Garcia, and a set of geopolitical conditions that had no business landing simultaneously except that they did. Oil pushing toward $120. Bonds selling off during a shooting war. Private credit gates closing at Blue Owl and Blackstone. Saturn conjunct Neptune in Aries — a configuration that hadn’t occurred since the mid-1800s — doing exactly what that configuration does: revealing that what looked permanent was contingent.
The argument was structural: this is not a cyclical disruption inside a stable trend. It is a fragility event inside a period when the system of assumptions itself is being renegotiated.
That piece ended with a specific claim. Jupiter turning direct in Cancer, Larry Williams’ 4-year cycle, and the separating Mars–North Node conjunction in Pisces all pointed toward a meaningful rally entry in late May — a recovery from whatever floor the geopolitical interval established. The floor, the piece argued, would be lower than where February started. The rally would come, but it would begin from different ground.
We are now in that interval. The Mars–North Node conjunction has not yet fully separated. The escalation pressure has not yet passed its peak. And the market structure — measured not by narrative but by the Monotonic Directional Indicator, the MDX — is showing exactly what you would expect to see in a period where the old pricing model no longer works cleanly and the new one has not yet been built.
The indices are divided. The structural integrity of higher highs is holding in two of the three primary instruments. The third has gone dark. That divergence is the subject of this analysis.
The Individual Heartbeats: SPY, QQQ, DIA
There is a particular kind of information that price charts don’t give you directly. They show you where the market went. They do not tell you whether the move was structurally sound — whether higher highs were being printed in sequence, with the kind of orderly cadence that distinguishes a trend from a series of accidental recoveries.
That is what the MDX measures. The blue line tracks the raw indicator: the monotonicity of higher highs in real time. The red line is the smoothed signal — a confirmation layer. The zero axis is equilibrium. Above it, the index is producing ordered, sequential higher highs. Below it, the sequence has broken and the market is printing lower highs with equal or greater consistency.
Three panels. Three very different stories right now.
SPY — The S&P 500 panel shows a market in the process of recovering structural integrity. After a stretch of volatile, non-directional movement — the blue line churning between roughly -0.4 and +0.4 without conviction — the MDX has crossed the zero axis with some force, and it is leading the red signal line upward. That sequencing matters. When the raw indicator runs ahead of the smoothed confirmation, it means the current higher-highs pattern is building momentum rather than simply echoing a prior move. The steps are becoming uniform again. The 80.43% continuation score in the stats table reflects this: the S&P is currently in a structural state where that trend is more likely to extend than to reverse.
QQQ — The NASDAQ-100 panel is the problem in this picture, and it is not a subtle one. Where the SPY is climbing with some conviction, the QQQ MDX is hovering at the zero line — not breaking above it with any sustained push, not collapsing below it into a clear downtrend, just grinding at equilibrium. The peaks in the blue line are lower than they were in prior months. The red signal line has not been consistently broken to the upside. In the individual stats column, QQQ registers FALSE for Trending Up and 0.00% for continuation probability. That is not a soft caution flag. That is the MDX stating, in the plainest terms it has, that the sequence of higher highs in the NASDAQ has not been present during this look-back window. Whatever the NASDAQ has been doing, it has not been trending in the structural sense this tool requires.
DIA — The Dow panel reads differently from both. Its MDX profile is smoother and more rounded — less volatile, less reactive, more consistent. The Dow has spent a meaningful portion of the recent look-back period in a stable, positive monotonic state, and the shape of the chart reflects that: long arcs rather than jagged crossings, the blue and red lines running close together with the blue maintaining its lead. The 79.69% continuation score matches what the chart shows. Right now, the Dow is the most structurally orderly of the three. In a market where the geopolitical environment has introduced sustained uncertainty, that consistency has a specific meaning: the capital that is trending is trending in the blue-chip industrial names, not in high-growth tech.
The Aggregate Picture — What 20% Actually Means
The aggregated NAS-DOW-SP view is where the individual readings become a verdict. Blending all three indices into a single macro signal forces a reckoning with what the divergence actually adds up to.
The dashboard as of March 6, 2026 shows:
Trending Up: 14 periods
Trending Down: 20 periods
Continuing Up: 20.00%
Continuation Down: 4.14%
The 20% continuation probability requires some unpacking, because it is easy to read it as a bearish signal and miss what it is actually saying. It is not saying the market is about to fall. The 4.14% continuation-down figure is the other side of that coin — the downside is equally incoherent. What 20% says is that only one in five monotonic cycles is successfully extending its run in either direction. The market cannot build. It is grinding.
The asymmetry between Trending Down (20) and Trending Up (14) means the aggregate weight of this period leans toward structural weakness. But neither side has the coordination required for a sustained directional move. There is no organized selling underway — no clean lower-highs sequence that would register as a monotonic bear trend. There is just friction. A market caught between two states, unable to commit to either.
The individual stats column is where the diagnostic gets precise. SPY at 80.43% and DIA at 79.69% are functioning. They are building. QQQ at 0.00% is not — and because all three feed the aggregate, QQQ’s absence drags the combined continuation probability down to the 20% ceiling. Two-thirds of the primary engines are pushing. One-third is stalled. A rally that depends on breadth across all three cannot clear that ceiling until the third engine re-engages.
This is the structural translation of what the prior piece described in macro terms: a period where the old pricing model no longer works cleanly. The SPY and DIA are attempting to rebuild. The NASDAQ — the index that led every major upswing of the prior cycle, the instrument most exposed to the interest rate and geopolitical dynamics currently in play — has stepped out of the trend entirely.
Under the Hood — The Industrial Engines
The MDX does not just track indices. It identifies, within those indices, the specific instruments producing the cleanest monotonic steps. The names currently surfaced in the Dow cluster are: DOW, BA, CVX, CMCSA, HON, CAT.
Read that list slowly. Caterpillar. Honeywell. Chevron. Boeing. These are not momentum trades. These are physical-economy companies — long-cycle businesses whose order books do not move on a single Federal Reserve statement or a single day of geopolitical headlines. Caterpillar runs on infrastructure spending cycles that span years. Honeywell’s industrial automation contracts are multi-year commitments. Chevron’s production assets do not reprice daily. Boeing, whatever its headline difficulties, carries a backlog measured in years of delivery.
These names are providing the orderly step-structure — the consistent higher highs — that the MDX rewards. When the QQQ reads FALSE and these six names are producing the only clean monotonic trends visible in the Dow complex, that is not a coincidence. It is a rotation signal expressed in the language of structural trend analysis.
The capital that is currently trending has moved from speculation to the industrial base. The “ordered” money — the money producing the consistent higher highs the MDX can detect — is sitting in names that have tangible assets, long-dated revenue, and some insulation from the specific fragilities the prior piece identified: rate sensitivity, geopolitical disruption to the semiconductor and AI infrastructure supply chains, the credit stress that lands hardest on high-multiple growth companies.
Without this cluster of names maintaining their structural integrity, the aggregate MDX would likely have already slipped into a fully negative regime. They are the reason the Dow’s continuation score remains near 80% while the NASDAQ sits at zero.
What the Analysts Are Missing
The current analyst consensus, reading the SPY’s recent recovery, is reaching for a broad-market green light. The MDX data does not support that read — not because the SPY is wrong, but because the SPY is not the whole picture.
Price targets are a distraction in a period like this. A stock that gains ten points in a single chaotic session is invisible to the MDX. A stock that gains one point per day for two weeks, consistently, with higher highs each time, is exactly what this tool looks for. The distinction matters because the geopolitical and macro environment described in the prior piece — the Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aries, the Mars–North Node applying aspect in Pisces, the fragility chains Garcia identified around the Strait, the private credit stress — creates precisely the conditions where price spikes without structural follow-through. Noise that looks like signal.
The strategic picture the data suggests is not complicated. Weight toward the monotonic leaders in the Dow cluster and the recovering SPY. Maintain a cautious posture on broad NASDAQ exposure until the QQQ MDX produces a clear, sustained crossing above the zero axis and registers a TRUE trending-up status. Do not interpret the SPY’s 80% continuation score as permission to treat the aggregate as healthy — it is not healthy yet. It is two-thirds healthy, and the missing third is the one most directly exposed to the pressures this period is generating.
The threshold to watch is the aggregate “Continuing Up” probability. At 20%, it is a ceiling. When it breaks meaningfully above 50% — when the NASDAQ re-engages and the three engines are pulling in the same direction — that is the structural confirmation that the new floor referenced in the prior piece has been established and the May rally is becoming the trend, not just a bounce.
Until that happens, the 20% ceiling is the honest read.
The Verdict
Market sentiment is an editorial. The MDX is arithmetic.
The prior piece argued that the floor from which the late May rally launches will be different from the floor February started from — that the interval between the Saturn–Neptune ignition and the Jupiter-direct re-engagement would be a period of repricing, of fragility chains expressing themselves in asset markets, of the old model no longer pricing correctly and the new one not yet built.
What the MDX is showing as of this writing is consistent with that interval. The broader market and the industrials are fighting to hold structural order. Tech has stepped back from the trend. The aggregate continuation probability — 20% — is the market’s own structural admission that it cannot sustain a directional move across all three primary instruments simultaneously.
This is not a crash signal. The downside continuation is equally incoherent, equally unable to sustain itself. This is a grinding, high-friction, directionally uncertain period — exactly what you would expect in the window the prior analysis described.
Jupiter will turn direct. The Mars–North Node separation will complete. The May entry point Williams identified will arrive. The structural recovery the SPY and DIA are attempting to build will eventually have the NASDAQ with it, or it won’t sustain.
Watch the QQQ MDX. When the NASDAQ starts producing clean, sequential higher highs again — when the blue line crosses the zero axis and holds, when the continuation score climbs out of zero and the trending-up status flips from FALSE to TRUE — that is the signal that the third engine has re-engaged. That is when the aggregate ceiling lifts and the broad-market rally has the structural foundation to be something more than two-thirds of a trend.
Until then: the sky confirms what the structure shows. The market is not broken. But it is not whole.
Ryan Hunt is an astrologer, enterprise architect, and publisher of Market Watching the Moon. The MDX (Monotonic Directional Indicator) is a proprietary oscillator measuring the monotonicity of higher highs across index and individual equity data. Nothing published here constitutes financial advice.