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The thermometer rises, the skeleton stays still — March 2025

Episode

The extreme

The stock market's sentiment decided that everything had changed. In a single month, mood crossed the entire neutral terrain and spilled into extreme optimism; the appetite for risk more than doubled. Anyone reading only the thermometer would conclude that the country had switched regimes. But the structure underneath — the skeleton that records where capital actually moves — refused to budge. Two readers of the same market, disagreeing out loud. In numbers: mood from 40.8 to 77.5, appetite from 31.2 to 73.7, against an intermarket that barely blinked, from 44.29 to 43.37, still in moderate risk-off — all under a Selic at 14.25% a year and the dollar at R$ 5.75.

What happened next

The skeleton did not chase the thermometer. It did the opposite: it sank first. In May, Finance/IBOV collapsed to z -3.18, and in June — three months later — the intermarket was still in strong risk-off, recovering only in part, to 22.19, while mood climbed to an almost invincible 92.3. Only in September, six months on, did the structure rehearse the turn that mood had anticipated: the Cyclical/Non-Cyclical ratio jumped from z 0.09 to 1.18, the money finally buying the cycle. And the account closed in the market's favor — March's stock market delivered +12.3% over six months, above the central band. A year later, in March 2026, the two clocks met: not at the top, but in the lukewarm, with mood pulled back to 60.6 and the Selic cut to 14.75%.

What did not happen

The euphoria did not prove to be a delusion. Anyone who treated the extreme optimism as a trap would have missed a double-digit rally. But the skeleton did not err either: it simply marked a slower clock — and, before confirming the party, it got worse. The reconciliation expected from the top came through the middle, with mood descending to meet the structure, and not the other way around. The engine itself refused the triumph: it classified the March outcome as an insufficient reading, resting on just five comparable episodes.

The honest verdict

The thermometer got the direction right; the skeleton got the rhythm right. The stock market rose, as mood suggested, but it took months of deterioration before the structure validated the rally. When the two readers disagree, rarely is one right and the other wrong — they tend to measure different clocks. And the Radar marked its own hit as an insufficient reading: too shallow a sample to become a lesson.

Continue reading: When the thermometers disagree · The structure leads the mood · How long mood takes to reach flow →

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Characters: Structure (intermarket) · Mood