Radar Perene / Articles / concept
What is the intermarket reading?
Concept
The intermarket reading is how the Radar reads the structure of the market from the inside: the ratios between classes and sectors — cyclical stocks against defensives, commodities against the index, banks, real estate funds, utilities. It does not measure mood or appetite. It measures where the capital is, in relative terms.
How to read it. The intermarket grid crosses between regimes — risk-on and risk-off —, and what matters is the shape: when the money prefers what thrives with the economy turning, or when it runs to what protects. The extremes of the ratios mark the strongest convictions.
Why it matters. The structure usually moves before the surface. Often the relative prices have already reorganized when mood has not even reacted yet — and it is in that lag that the information lives.
What it is not. It is not a sector recommendation. An extreme ratio does not say "buy this"; it says capital has taken a side with unusual conviction — and what comes next, the archive shows case by case.
Related episodes: The house in the dark (2022) · Structure turned before mood (2016) · The three alarms of 2015 →
Read also: What is the Perene Risk Index? · Cyclicals vs defensives: the duel that reveals appetite · The house in the dark: the structure's floor at the end of 2022 preceded a year of discord · The 2016 bottom: structure turned before mood — and long before rates · The three alarms of August 2015 — and the bottom that wasn't the bottom
Characters: Structure (intermarket)