December in reverse, in thirty days

Episode

The extreme

December 2022 closed the year with the entire structure shrunk: the intermarket at the absolute floor of the scale, the investor downcast, the regime in hard risk-off. January 2023 flipped the switch in thirty days. The intermarket score jumped from 0.17 to 66.15, back to moderate risk-on; Ânima recovered from 30.4 to 67.6, into extreme optimism; and the cyclical/defensive ratio made the largest move on the board, from -1.17 to +1.29 of deviation. Capital traded shelter for cycle in a single month.

What happened next

The 30-day rebound was real, but selective in what lasted. The cyclical bet born in January did not hold at once: by March the money was running for defense again, with the cyclical/defensive ratio plunging -1.54 of deviation and mood sinking to 20.6. What January inaugurated — the willingness to reprice risk upward — would only firm up for real months later, at the turn into December 2023, when the structure locked in the cyclical bet (ratio at +1.17) with domestic risk at 89.7.

What didn't happen

January's rebound did not seal the turn. Anyone reading the 30-day swing as "now it's going" would have been contradicted by March, when defense returned and mood sank. And January itself gave warning: the internal risk axis hesitated (from 37.3 to 43.7, stalling at neutral) without underwriting the euphoria of mood and prices. 2023 would still be a year of mismatches — the month corrected the pessimism, not the discord.

Honest verdict

January 2023 undid in thirty days the pessimism December had left on the floor — but it did not close the discord that would mark the year. A month can erase the one before it without thereby closing the story.

Continue the story: The house in the dark (2022 election) · A year of discord · What the intermarket reading is →

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Characters: Structure (intermarket) · Mood · Cyclicals × defensives