The house in the dark: the structure's floor at the end of 2022 preceded a year of discord

Marquee

The extreme

In December 2022, at the close of an election year, the entire market structure contracted in on itself. The intermarket reading ended the month practically at zero, at the floor of the scale, and domestic investor mood pulled back sharply. The internal risk axis took the opposite path, returning to neutral — one more mismatch among the gauges. In numbers: intermarket from 39.8 to 0.17, Ânima from 45.9 to 30.4, and the Perene Risk Index from 25.9 to 37.3, with the Selic at 13.75%.

What happened next

The exit was slow and full of mismatches. In March 2023 the money was still running for defense: the cyclicals-to-defensives ratio plunged -1.54 of deviation, and mood remained downcast (20.6). In June sentiment overheated on its own — Ânima crossed into extreme optimism (69.2) while relative prices did not confirm. And only in December 2023, a year later, did structure and risk truly align in long territory: cyclical/non-cyclical at +1.17 and domestic risk at 89.7.

What didn't happen

The floor of December 2022 did not set off an immediate rebound. Anyone reading the darkness as "it has already turned" would have crossed a full year of discord: mood and structure barely agreed in 2023, and the Selic stayed at 13.75% for almost the entire period. The extreme contraction was the setting, not the turn.

Honest verdict

The structure's floor preceded the recovery — by a year of mismatches. Maximum darkness tends to be the staging of the turn, not the turn itself.

Continue the story: A year of discord · December in reverse (Jan 2023) · What the intermarket reading is →

The Radar reads these regimes every day. See today's reading →

Characters: Structure (intermarket) · Mood · Flow (risk appetite) · Rates (Selic) · Cyclicals × defensives