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Signal Methodology

How Market Pulse Intelligence synthesizes raw market data into proprietary composite signals.

Market Pulse Intelligence monitors 100+ data points across six major market domains and combines them into proprietary composite signals. Each signal is designed to highlight specific market conditions that are difficult to see by watching any single data point in isolation. This page provides a high-level overview of our methodology without revealing the specific weightings, thresholds, or formulas that make our signals proprietary.

Design Principles

Every Pulse Signal follows three core principles:

  • Composite over single-factor. No individual data point is ever enough. Each signal blends multiple indicators to reduce noise and surface durable themes.
  • Divergence detection. Our signals are designed to flag when different markets are telling conflicting stories — the information edge lives in the divergence, not the consensus.
  • Real-time + contextual. Every signal combines fast-moving market data (prices, volatility) with slower contextual data (credit conditions, macro indicators, policy expectations).

The Six Pulse Signal Families

Market Pulse Score (Ensemble ML)

A machine learning ensemble combining XGBoost with a momentum/mean-reversion signal. The model is retrained daily on rolling historical data using SHAP feature selection to surface the most predictive features from a pool of 128+ candidates. Outputs include a probability-of-up score, directional label, and the top feature drivers behind each prediction.

Tracked accuracy, cross-validation scores, and 60-day backtest performance are displayed transparently. Past accuracy is not a guarantee of future performance.

Credit Pulse Signals

Designed to capture credit stress before it shows up in headline numbers. Components track:

  • Fallen Angel Pressure — ratio-based signal from investment-grade spread tiers (BBB relative to AAA) to detect IG-to-HY downgrade risk
  • Distress Tier Widening — high yield spread dispersion (CCC relative to BB) to flag defaults imminent
  • Financial Conditions — weekly credit subindex tracking
  • Bank Lending Pulse — week-over-week change in commercial lending aggregates
  • Financial Stress — composite stress indicators

Crypto Pulse Signals

Combines spot market data with perpetual futures derivatives data to surface positioning imbalances:

  • Fear & Greed — retail sentiment indicator used as a contrarian overlay
  • Funding Rate — overheated longs vs capitulating shorts
  • Long/Short Ratio — account positioning with 4-hour trend
  • Open Interest — leverage buildup detection
  • ETF Flow — institutional demand signal
  • Taker Buy/Sell Pressure — aggressor-side volume imbalance
  • BTC Dominance + Stablecoin Supply — rotation and liquidity signals

Macro Pulse Signals

Tracks the macroeconomic backdrop for risk assets:

  • Yield Curve — inversion detection across 10Y-2Y and 10Y-3M
  • Inflation Pulse — breakeven inflation expectations + mortgage rate pass-through
  • Recession Risk — NY Fed probability model + Sahm Rule + GDPNow
  • Rate Expectations — market-implied cuts or hikes vs Fed target
  • Dollar Strength — DXY direction as a cross-asset driver
  • Labor Market — unemployment and jobless claims trend

Geopolitical & Volatility Pulse

Cross-asset stress detection combining news and market data:

  • Cross-Asset Panic — simultaneous VIX spike, gold surge, oil spike, bond rally, and equity selloff
  • Safe Haven Flow — directional money flow between risk and safety assets
  • Volatility Regime — VIX level, term structure, VVIX, MOVE, and SKEW blended into a single classification
  • Conflict Intensity — news velocity + high-impact keyword tracking + defense stock confirmation
  • War Premium — defense sector outperformance + prediction market probabilities
  • Contagion Risk — stress-spreading detection across asset classes

Commodity Pulse Signals

Monitors supply/demand stress across commodity complexes:

  • Energy Stress — oil and natural gas volatility and direction
  • Precious Metals Flow — gold/silver momentum and gold-vs-equity outperformance
  • Industrial Demand — Dr. Copper + Baltic Dry shipping as real-economy signals
  • Ag Pressure — food inflation signal from wheat and corn
  • Dollar Wind — dollar direction as commodity tailwind or headwind
  • Supply Disruption Risk — geopolitical overlay on commodity prices

Pulse Predictions (Cross-Platform)

We aggregate prediction market data from Polymarket and Kalshi to produce a unified Prediction Market Risk signal. Our algorithm scans all tracked markets for risk-relevant themes (recession, war, default, tariff, conflict, etc.) and groups them into geopolitical and economic risk categories. This surfaces what the crowd is actually pricing in real time, which often diverges from what traditional markets or news headlines suggest.

News Aggregation & AI Analysis

Six news categories (Breaking, Macro, Credit, Geopolitical, Commodities, Crypto) are aggregated from Google News RSS, CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, Decrypt, and other free news feeds. Raw headlines are processed through:

  • Sentiment scoring — keyword-based bearish/bullish classification
  • Velocity tracking — story volume changes to detect accelerating narratives
  • High-impact detection — pattern matching for escalation keywords
  • AI synthesis — Claude Haiku generates concise 2-3 sentence summaries that connect dots across signals

Pulse Briefs

Three times daily (6:30 AM, 12:00 PM, and 5:00 PM ET), we publish "What You Need to Know" executive briefs that synthesize all Pulse Wire summaries, macro calendar events, and market signals into a single digest. Briefs include Top Takeaways, upcoming macro calendar events, and a section-by-section synthesis covering the six major market domains. Briefs are cached once generated to minimize AI compute cost.

Data Update Cadence

  • Prices (equities, crypto, commodities, currencies) — refreshed every 10 seconds during market hours
  • Macro and credit data (FRED series) — cached server-side with 5-minute TTL, updates as FRED publishes
  • Crypto derivatives (OKX) — cached with 60-second TTL
  • Prediction markets (Polymarket + Kalshi) — cached with 2-minute TTL
  • News feeds — polled every 10 seconds, deduplicated, sorted newest first
  • AI summaries — cached 15 to 60 minutes depending on section, to keep compute cost low

Data Sources

All data is sourced from reputable free or paid public APIs:

  • Yahoo Finance — equities, ETFs, commodities, currencies, global markets
  • FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) — 40+ macro and credit series
  • ICE BofA indices via FRED — corporate bond spread tiers
  • CoinGecko — cryptocurrency prices, market cap, dominance
  • OKX Public API — crypto derivatives (funding, open interest, long/short, taker volume)
  • alternative.me — Crypto Fear & Greed Index
  • DefiLlama — stablecoin supply aggregation
  • Polymarket Gamma API — prediction market probabilities
  • Kalshi Public API — regulated prediction markets
  • Google News RSS, CoinDesk RSS, CoinTelegraph RSS, Decrypt RSS — news feeds
  • Anthropic Claude API — AI-generated summaries and briefs

What Makes These Signals Proprietary

Anyone can look up the VIX, or the 10-year Treasury yield, or BTC funding rates. What makes Market Pulse Intelligence signals proprietary is:

  • Specific composite weightings — we do not publish the exact weights applied to each component, nor the threshold levels that trigger each label
  • Cross-domain synthesis — combining data from credit, crypto, macro, and geopolitical sources into unified risk signals that don't exist in any single data provider
  • Divergence logic — our signals are specifically tuned to flag when markets disagree with each other, which is where most actionable information lives
  • Continuous refinement — the ML model is retrained daily, and signal thresholds are periodically reviewed against historical outcomes
Important: All Pulse Signals are provided for informational and educational purposes only. They are experimental composite indicators and do not constitute financial advice. Signals may be wrong, may not predict future market movements, and should not be used as the sole basis for any investment decision. See our Disclaimer and Terms of Service for details.

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