This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

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Since the spring lows, momentum has driven this market: the momentum factor, small-caps, mega-caps, and the Nasdaq all put in a sharp bottom in April and rallied hard into new highs by July/August. That’s the setup. What’s new this week is that several of the relative-strength gauges behind that rally are rolling over at nearly the same time — not a crash signal, but a breadth-of-leadership warning worth watching.

MOMENTUM FACTOR (MTUM) — ROLLING OVER MTUM (the pure momentum-factor ETF) hit an all-time high of 345.59 in July, and has since pulled back to 299.71 — down about 13% off the peak. More telling than price: both relative-strength gauges we track on it have flipped negative. The RSI-smoothed relative-strength reading is at -3.24 (from a strong positive extreme earlier this summer). The Mansfield gauge — which measures whether MTUM’s price ratio to SPY is running above or below its own 252-day trend, not just whether MTUM is beating SPY outright — is at -1.79, down sharply from a stretched +20 reading in June/July. In plain terms: MTUM’s outperformance trend isn’t just slowing, it’s now running below its own long-term pace.

SMALL-CAP STYLE ROTATION — TURNED NEGATIVE The small-cap gauge tracks Russell 2000 Value (RUO) minus Russell 2000 Growth (RUJ) on a blended momentum basis — the 5-, 15-, and 25-day price change, equally weighted (the 35-day leg is switched off). It spent April through July firmly positive — value leading growth during that recovery stretch off the 1,530 low — but has now rolled to -1.08, its first clean negative reading since the rally began. Growth is reasserting itself over value within small-caps.

MEGA-CAPS (OEX / S&P 100) — LAST ONE STANDING, BUT FADING The S&P 100 made a new high of 3,853 this month after its own sharp recovery from the April low near 3,074. Its Mansfield reading — OEX’s price ratio to SPY versus its own 50-day trend — is still positive at +0.4, the only one of the four gauges here that hasn’t crossed negative. But the bars have been tapering off the last few sessions, suggesting even mega-cap leadership is losing steam, not gaining it.

NASDAQ COMPOSITE — JOINED THE ROLLOVER The Composite hit a new high of 27,190 in early August after its own V-shaped recovery from the April low near 20,690. Its Mansfield reading has now turned negative at -0.33, reversing a strong stretch from April into July where its relative-strength trend was running well above its own average. Growth/tech leadership, like the momentum factor itself, is cooling.

BOTTOM LINE Four different lenses on momentum — the pure factor (MTUM), small-cap style, the Nasdaq, and mega-caps — all show the same shape: a hard correction into April, a powerful outperformance rally into July/August, and now a rollover in relative strength happening within days of each other. Mega-caps are the only holdout still net positive, and even that reading is fading. This doesn’t mean the broader market rolls over — price is still near highs across these indices — but it does mean the leadership that carried the rally is losing conviction, and that’s typically an early signal worth watching rather than ignoring.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Trend and volatility inputs remain constructive, but breadth signals have turned decisively cautionary. This is a market where the surface is calm and the internals are not — the setup most worth flagging heading into next week.

• Adaptive Volatility Composite: Green — Volatility regime is calm, no fear …

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This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Read more

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Read more

Read more

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Read more

Read more

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Read more

Read more

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Trend and volatility inputs remain constructive, and breadth signals stayed decisively cautionary this week — with two of the three breadth gauges pushing further into warning territory. The surface is still calm; the internals got louder.

• Adaptive Volatility Composite: Green — Volatility regime is calm, no fear premium priced in.

• Triple 40: Red — credit-cost inputs remain bearish, independent of price trend. Confirmed this week via cross-referenced signal (see note below).

• Breadth internals: unanimous warning, and intensifying — Whaley MHL (2.02, up from 1.76) and Fosback HLL (2.15, up from 1.78, now at its churn threshold) both climbed further into warning range; Fosback Breadth Ratio held flat at 0.219.

• Hindenburg Omen: 7/28, plus 2 more on 8/7 and 8/11— now ~14 sessions into its 30-session active window.

• Net allocation: 71% of the equity sleeve, carried forward from last week’s confirmed figures.

Trend & Volatility Signals

The two “top-down” models are diverging from each other this week.

Because Triple 40’s sell condition can fire on credit alone, it typically leads a price breakdown rather than confirming one after the fact — worth watching for SPX’s own trend to follow. This week’s read was cross-checked against a second system built on the identical SPX/commercial-paper/Baa-yield formula, which independently confirmed the sell condition (“RISK OFF”) as of 8/14.

Breadth & Internals — Warning Signs

Every breadth-based signal we track is currently flagging caution simultaneously — a pattern worth taking seriously even though each indicator individually carries a meaningful false-positive rate.

Figure 1 — SPX (multi-year daily) with Fosback HLL, Fosback Breadth Ratio, Whaley MHL, Hindenburg Omen, and Adaptive Volatility Composite panels, as of 8/14.

Allocation Model — Equity

Signal directions cross-confirmed this cycle (Triple 40 red, SectorSurfer StormGuard green) via the cross-referenced system’s live output; exact allocation percentages carried forward from last week’s figures.

Bottom Line

Price and volatility are still telling a risk-on story — the Adaptive Volatility Composite is calm and the equity sleeve remains 71% deployed, carried by StormGuard and the volatility model. Triple 40 stayed red again this week, confirmed independently via a second system’s identical SPX/commercial-paper/Baa-yield formula (“RISK OFF” as of 8/14) — credit-cost inputs, not SPX’s own price trend, remain the driver. Meanwhile the breadth picture got louder rather than quieter: Whaley MHL and Fosback HLL both climbed further into warning range this week, the Fosback Breadth Ratio held flat in caution territory, and the Hindenburg Omen from 7/28 is still active with no new trigger since. That combination — low realized volatility and intact price trend, alongside tightening financial conditions and breadth internals still deteriorating — is historically when markets are most vulnerable to a sharp repricing, since little downside premium is currently built into price. This remains a watch-and-tighten-risk posture rather than an all-clear, pending confirmation from price itself.

PART 2: INTERMARKET DYNAMICS

Pairwise Trend Signals Across Equities, Bonds, Gold, Commodities & the Dollar

As of August 14, 2026

A separate set of relative-momentum models pits pairs of assets head-to-head and lets the stronger trend win the allocation — a complementary, bottom-up read alongside Part 1’s top-down signals.

Part 2 — Bottom Line

The dollar’s strength this cycle is asset-selective rather than universal: it’s decisively beating gold (53 sessions running, pinned at its risk ceiling) but just lost to oil, whose short-term momentum surged. Equities remain the strongest asset in this lineup — the equities-vs-bonds trend is at a new conviction high — while the equities-vs-oil pairing continues to narrow without resolving. Net read: broad risk-on, with a still-undecided oil/equities tug-of-war worth watching.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security. Backtested results are hypothetical, depend on data and implementation assumptions, and do not represent actual trading. Past performance does not guarantee future results.