Macro Tide · No. 10Proprietary

The credit alarm went off, and the book is cutting risk for the first time

The regime read — bottom line first

The week that was

What changed this week

• Conviction rose +0.04 → +0.11 (+0.06).
• Fast-cut FIRED — de-risk now.
• Allocation shifts (>3pt, a sleeve entering or leaving, or the US vehicle split): US equity -26.6pt; Int'l developed -8.3pt; Emerging mkts -6.2pt; Diversified commodities -10.5pt; Gold -6.8pt; Managed futures +8.6pt (enters the book); Cash +51.0pt (enters the book).

Sleeve moves — from % to %, and why

Target weights of the Macro Tide Core, last note → this note, every sleeve. A move is either the rules (a methodology change, dated in the changelog) or the regime (conviction, quadrant, a gate) — the why says which. Tilt figures are computed from this edition's z and this product's own tilt strength. The withdrawal dial (below the allocation table) sits on top of these and never changes them.

Bold = moved ≥ 0.5pp. History accrues in targets_log.csv by edition.

Where we are — the 2×2

The liquidity tide

The six-cycle read

Each row is the CURRENT-WEEK standing — every cycle is recomputed on the latest data (not the frozen month-end): z-scores vs each series' ~10-yr norm for the composites (+ = above average), 13-week momentum for Liquidity, and the spread level for Credit. Last wk is the reading in the previous note and Δ wk the move since; what changed underneath is in the sections below.

Native readings (under the hood): Growth = 8/11 indicators above trend · Inflation = 6/8 up (broad underlying ~2.6%) · Liquidity = net $5.8T · Monetary = 2y 4.51%, real 2.60% · Positioning = VIX 28 · Dollar = +0.2% y/y (broad TWI).

How to read the scores. The z column counts standard deviations from that cycle's own ten-year average, so it says how UNUSUAL a reading is rather than what it is. Zero is normal, half a point is mildly above average, one point is unusual and two is rare. Leading indicators carry the most weight in the average. Growth, Inflation, Monetary and Positioning all lean on monthly data, so the tape flag beside Growth and Inflation is the fresher read: it comes from five days of market moves across asset classes and can run a month or two ahead of the slower score it either confirms or contradicts. Two rows work differently — Liquidity is thirteen-week momentum, not a z-score, and Credit is simply the spread level.

Treasury liq (Bessent's bridge): the Treasury injects liquidity via long-bond buybacks + bill-heavy issuance — swapping duration for near-cash, which eases financial conditions like stealth QE without the Fed cutting. +0.80 = injecting; a displayed read, not wired into conviction.

Dollar (how it's measured): the Fed's broad trade-weighted USD (DTWEXBGS, 26 currencies incl. China/Mexico/EM), +0.2% YoY and below its 12-mo trend. The narrower, euro-heavy DXY can read firmer — the softness is concentrated against trade/EM partners, which is exactly the debasement tilt (gold + EM).

Liquidity — current weekly read (Fed H.4.1), now wired into conviction: net Fed liquidity $5.79T, 13-week momentum -1.5% as of 2026-11-04 — vs the trailing monthly composite's -1.5%. The drain is steady (TGA rebuild into a drained RRP now pulls on bank reserves directly). Every cycle is now recomputed weekly on the latest data; the monthly composite remains the historical backbone the states are smoothed against.

Global liquidity (Howell). We add up the big central banks' balance sheets in dollars — Fed $6.7T, ECB $6.6T, BoJ $4.0T, $17.3T in all — and track whether that total is growing or shrinking over thirteen weeks. It is running at -0.9% (as of 2026-10-30; the global figures lag about a week), against -1.5% for the Fed on its own, because the ECB and BoJ are shrinking too. This feeds conviction alongside the Fed read, and the two agree this week. On our data it leads the S&P's next-quarter return by about thirteen weeks (roughly 0.6 correlation), so a shrinking tide is a headwind ahead rather than today — which is Howell's “liquidity peaked around the end of 2025” call. Note this is the slow, leading read: the fast-cut's funding test watches US money-market plumbing directly instead (SOFR against IORB). China's central bank, which Howell ties to gold, would be a fourth leg; there is no clean free data series for it yet.

Cross-asset tape

The market's leading edge vs the monthly composite — 5-day moves as of 2026-11-06.

Nowcast — Inflation cooling ↓, Growth mixed →. The six-cycle inflation reading is recomputed weekly (now +0.19) and its momentum state still reads cooling; the cross-asset tape (5-day) agrees (oil, 10Y). This tape read is the leading edge, shown not wired into the sleeves: if it persists, the momentum state flips and conviction gets cut (inflation enters as −i_state at a 0.25 weight). Growth internals are noisier — one soft breadth print isn't a turn while the hard data (payrolls) is firm.

Color = direction of the 5-day move, not good/bad. Free data (Yahoo): UST yields, DXY & major FX, commodity ETFs, diesel (ULSD future — the real-economy barometer of the oil shock; diesel outpacing crude = the cost is running ahead of the headline), HY/IG credit, equal- vs cap-weight breadth, listed BDCs vs HY (the private-credit tell: BDCs lagging high-yield = the market pricing private-credit stress ahead of the quarterly marks).

Factor lens — 1D · WTD · QTD · YTD

Style factors vs the S&P 500, excess return in percentage points, as of 2026-11-06 (WTD from the 2026-10-30 close, QTD from 2026-09-30, YTD from 2025-12-31). z = this week's 5-day excess vs its own 1-year distribution. Shown, not wired into the sleeves.

S&P 500 itself: 1D +0.31% · WTD -2.70% · QTD -3.58% · YTD +7.83%.

Sleeve scoreboard — the nine sleeves vs the S&P

Absolute return and excess vs SPY over the same horizons — the model's own building blocks, watched the way the factors are.

Styles. Year-to-date value leads (+14.6pp vs the S&P) and growth lags (-13.4pp); quarter-to-date low-vol leads (+7.5pp) and momentum lags (-16.1pp); this week value (+2.2pp) over momentum (-7.5pp). The leader changes with the horizon — rotation inside the market rather than one persistent bet.

Value vs growth. Value is 28.0pp ahead of growth year-to-date — the reflation/late-cycle signature (higher yields, oil, a weaker dollar) that the inflation-tilted regime read implies; it is also why the equal-weight index has stopped underperforming.

Risk appetite. Low-vol -0.3pp YTD — neutral. Small caps +6.7pp YTD — breadth is real, the rally is not just the top ten.

Momentum. -5.9pp YTD but -16.1pp QTD: the July crowding reversal, the multi-strategy deleveraging Burry described, returned the excess. The US-equity sleeve holds momentum on a band — the gate turns on above conviction +0.20, off below −0.20, and holds its state in between — which is the condition designed for this case.

Sleeves, year-to-date. gold -6.0% (-13.8pp vs SPY); commodities +41.7% (+33.8pp vs SPY); EM +8.4% (+0.6pp vs SPY); intl developed +8.7% (+0.9pp vs SPY); mega-cap growth +2.4% (-5.5pp vs SPY); managed futures +12.2% (+4.4pp vs SPY); long bonds -6.0% (-13.8pp vs SPY); bitcoin -13.6% (-21.5pp vs SPY).

What it tells the model. Commodities are well ahead of the S&P while long bonds lag — the pattern an inflation tape makes. The real-asset sleeve is positioned for it, and long bonds are out of the book — the same side the tape is on. Mega-cap growth is lagging the index this quarter, so the concentration that drove the year is loosening a little at the edges. That leg is the one to watch. Bitcoin is far behind gold. Both are meant to gain when money is being debased, but bitcoin also needs plentiful liquidity, and it is not confirming the move. The tilt keeps the position small.

5-day risk pairs: High-beta vs low-vol -6.96pp · Cyclicals vs defensives +1.17pp · Small vs large +0.67pp. Read: Quality is the leading style (+1.28pp vs the S&P); growth ahead of value by 1.30pp; but it's a rotation, not a broad risk move — high-beta and defensive sectors are pulling opposite ways (rate-driven, not growth-driven).

The Gundlach dashboard

Four of Jeffrey Gundlach's standing metrics, reproduced from free data (Sep-8-2026 webcast, "The Fed's Next Move"). Shown as context for the Monetary cycle and the duration gate — none is wired into conviction.

How we use it: the 10-year model and the 2-year spread inform the Monetary cycle's narrative and the duration gate (gate opens only when the monetary read turns); CAPE is valuation context — our own point-in-time test found valuation does not time entries, so it stays out of conviction; copper/gold is a tape cross-check.

The week in numbers

Last note vs this note for the gauge; the tape by day from the daily monitor's snapshots. What moved, in one table.

What we learned this week

The inputs that came in, and what the model did with each — adopted, tested and kept, tested and rejected, or recorded as commentary. Details in the model changelog.

• The alarm fired on a two-hundredths margin, and the rule is right not to care. The Baa spread rose to 1.57 against a six-month average of 1.55. A reader will ask why a model would upend three books on so thin a difference. The answer is that the rule was tested against two decades of credit episodes, and in that history the cost of waiting for a wide margin was larger than the cost of a cut that reversed. We would rather take a cut that un-trips next week than skip one that should have been taken. This is the first live test of that trade, and it will be scored like everything else: what the cut cost or saved, from this Friday's close to the day it clears.

• The rule reads the month's latest print as the month's value, and that is a design question, not a defect (model). The six-month average is built from month-end values, but the current month is whatever the latest daily print says. So a Thursday print tripped it, and a Friday print could un-trip it. Research is raising with the owner whether the live month should read the same way as history. Nothing changes until that is decided, and this edition's cut stands on the rule as it is.

• A forecaster said our credit measure looks in the wrong place; a week later it fired anyway. Last edition recorded Jeffrey Gundlach's challenge that the stress is at the low-quality and private end, where our Baa measure does not look. He was right about where the stress was: CCC-rated companies pay nine and a half points more than single-B. He was wrong that our measure would not see it. A high-quality, slow-moving spread still moved. The disagreement stays on the ledger, with both numbers.

• Momentum cost the book again, and the gate that holds it is a published rule (model). The momentum fund fell 8.7% on the week against the index's 2.7%, and is 23% below its June peak. It has cost the book in three of the last four weeks. The gate that keeps it in the US sleeve runs on a published register with hysteresis and has not flipped. The right place for that question is a registered test, and research has one open. It is not a hand adjustment, and we have not made one.

• Under a cut, the duration gate still hands a quarter of the unused long-bond weight to US equity (model). The cut caps risk at 35%, then the gate moves the bond share it keeps out of Treasuries three-quarters to cash and a quarter to the growth sleeve, as it does every week. In a cut that quarter is about five points of the book, so the risky sleeves land near 40% rather than 35%. That is the rule as written and tested, not a fault in this run; whether a cut should switch that leak off is a question for a registered spec, and it goes to research with this edition.

• The targets file records the cut as a 20% cap while the products are cut to 35% (process). The weekly engine writes a risk-cap column alongside the targets, and that column prints the legacy model's cap rather than the product's. The weights themselves are right, because the allocator maps the cut onto each product's own cap; the label beside them is not. Found on this run, the first time a cut has been written. Handed to research; display only, nothing in the books is affected.

• Friday's daily page said the cut leaves "the rest in cash and gold", and that was wrong (process). The defensive side of a cut is cash and managed futures. Gold is a risk sleeve in this model and is cut with the others, from 11% to 4%. The daily was written from memory of the rule rather than from the allocator's output, and the owner's reading of Friday's page would have expected more gold than the books now hold. Corrected here, and the daily's next run will say the same.

• Gold worked in the week it was supposed to. Up 4.7% while the market fell hardest. Two editions ago we wrote that gold and bitcoin were falling with equities and that this was an explanation, not a defence. This week gold did its job and bitcoin did not, which is consistent with what we said then: bitcoin needs plentiful liquidity as well as debasement, and gold does not.

• The economy and the stock market disagreed, and the gauge sided with the economy. Payrolls, claims, factory orders, job openings, both ISM surveys and productivity were all firm. The market fell on politics and the AI trade. The gauge reads data, and conviction rose. The cut came from a different place, which is the whole point of having an alarm rule that does not consult the gauge.

• The average stock set a record in a week the index fell 2.7%. The equal-weight index closed at a 2026 high on Wednesday. Health care, banks, staples, materials, Apple, Microsoft and Lilly did too. We do not hold the equal-weight index, by construction, and this week that choice cost us the way it did two editions ago. Three registered tests of an equal-weight leg have failed, so the choice stands. It is recorded here so the cost is visible.

• The daily note was rewritten for a normal reader this week, at the owner's instruction, and this edition follows it (process). Fewer numbers, every term explained the first time, the rules as the plot. The tables still carry every figure.

• The Schwab token is step zero of the Sunday ritual, and it was valid this week (process). It expires Tuesday; the owner renews it in his own terminal.

Inflation cross-check · COVID-robustour standard read (+0.19) measures inflation against a decade whose average was inflated by the 2021–23 spike. On a COVID-robust basis (median/MAD) it reads +0.57, and broad underlying inflation still sits +0.60pp above the 2% target — the disinflation is off the peak, not below normal.

What moved under the hood

Which of the 19 sub-indicators shifted this week — only the movers (|Δz| ≥ 0.25).

Net: Growth -0.01 → +0.49 · Inflation -0.04 → +0.19 · nothing flipped a cycle.

The week ahead

Scheduled releases that could move the gauge — consensus where available.

Real-world check

Prediction markets this week

Monetary · Financial conditions · Dollar — where the crowd is pricing the macro.

Target allocation

Three products, one engine. Macro Tide Core — the engine, long-only, for retirement accounts · no withdrawals · drawdown budget 12%. Macro Tide Spring — the engine plus a 15/15 market-neutral pair, in a taxable margin account · gross 130%, net 100%; its sleeve weights are the Macro Tide Core's, the pair sits on top. Macro Tide Harbor — the engine with two years of spending held in T-bills, for clients drawing income · hard 10% cash floor at 5%/yr; 4% / 6% are dials: floor = max(10%, 2 × rate); today the floor does not bind (the Macro Tide Core already holds 51% cash). All three: risk cap 1.00, ladder 1.00 / 0.90 / 0.80 / 0.25 / 0.10 on conviction, fast-cut to 35% risk, momentum tilt k .50, Gundlach duration gate, the momentum leg (SPMO) gated on ±0.20 hysteresis in conviction. Adopted 2026-09-13 on fifteen pre-registered bars (changelog §27); the books run from the 8/31 close on these rules (§28).

US-equity legs: SPY 33 / SPMO 33 / MAGS 33 (momentum ON — conviction +0.11; the gate turns on above +0.20, off below −0.20, and holds in between) The US-equity sleeve is a deliberate, sized bet on the AI capex cycle (MAGS, and momentum while the gate holds) — an exposure the conviction gate and the fast-cut exist to contain, not a claim that the cycle's returns on capital will hold.

Macro Tide Summit — in preparation

Core's book in a retirement account, with the equity sleeves at 1.4× through listed calls on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. Every sleeve is Core's; what differs is below. Summit is not yet offered: these are its targets for the 2026-11-06 close, on the record before its ledger exists.

Calls read from the chain at the 2026-11-06 close, mid prices; contracts per $1 million at that close's spot.

Relative-momentum tilt (allocator 1.16): each non-US risk sleeve × (1 + 0.50·z), z = its 12-month return vs SPY against its own 120-month history, clipped ±2; the risk sleeves are rescaled so the risk budget and cash are unchanged. Read at the 2026-11-30 close: Int'l z +1.1 → ×1.56 · EM z +0.7 → ×1.34 · Commodities z +1.6 → ×1.80 · Gold z -0.7 → ×0.67 · Long bonds z +0.0 → ×1.02.

Duration gate (Gundlach, allocator 1.18): 10-yr 4.86% vs fair value 4.73% ((Bund + 7-yr nominal GDP growth) ÷ 2; Bund 3.27 (2026-11-06), GDP to 2026-07) → gap +0.13pp → TLT at 0% of its regime weight (scales in from +0.25pp, full at +0.75pp). Own duration only when the bond is cheap to his model; at a fair-value gap long bonds beat cash 40% of the time, above +0.25pp 78%.

Commodity gate (allocator 1.20, changelog §33): the commodity sleeve moves to cash when global liquidity momentum or the monetary read sits one standard deviation below its own 60-month norm. This week: liquidity z +0.32, monetary z -0.12 → gate OFF. Adopted on ten pre-registered bars; its work is in tightening cycles (gated months lost 2.8%/mo in 2007–16).

The $100,000 Macro Tide Core ledger

the engine, long-only, for retirement accounts · no withdrawals · drawdown budget 12%. A share-by-share ledger started at the 8/31/2026 closes. It trades only when a sleeve drifts more than 3 points off target, or once a month, and every trade is dated in the rebalance log. A hypothetical track record, not advice.

The $100,000 Macro Tide Spring ledger

the engine plus a 15/15 market-neutral pair, in a taxable margin account · gross 130%, net 100%. A share-by-share ledger started at the 8/31/2026 closes. It trades only when a sleeve drifts more than 3 points off target, or once a month, and every trade is dated in the rebalance log. A hypothetical track record, not advice.

The $100,000 Macro Tide Harbor ledger

the engine with two years of spending held in T-bills, for clients drawing income · hard 10% cash floor at 5%/yr; 4% / 6% are dials: floor = max(10%, 2 × rate). A share-by-share ledger started at the 8/31/2026 closes. It trades only when a sleeve drifts more than 3 points off target, or once a month, and every trade is dated in the rebalance log. A hypothetical track record, not advice.

The books vs SPY

Inception 8/31/2026 · week 10 · $100,000 each · products reconstructed to the 8/31 close on the rules adopted 9/13 · marked to the 11/6/2026 close.

Macro Tide Core, Macro Tide Spring and Macro Tide Harbor are $100,000 share ledgers run from the 8/31 close on the rules adopted 9/13 — their history to that date is a reconstruction from the reads published each week, at Schwab closes, with the same drift rule (changelog §28). SPY is a 100% S&P-500 benchmark on the standard weekly basis — the 8/28 close (769.35), a fixed historical close, → latest close. That basis is what makes the benchmark's weekly move below the same figure Google and Schwab quote for the S&P. Max drawdown is the realised peak-to-trough of every daily close since inception, not of the weekly marks: the marks are the days the model happened to run, and a trough between two of them is invisible to them (perf 1.13.0, after edition 7's figure was restated). It is measured to the latest close, so a book still falling shows its drawdown running rather than recovered. It is the live path to date and not the 2007–26 backtested figure; those are in Four ways to hold the same risk. Sharpe and beta are withheld until 52 weekly marks (week 8 of 52): annualised from fewer, they would be a confident number about nothing. Hypothetical, not advice. The Balanced book was closed at the 9/11/2026 mark at $100,155 (+0.16% since inception) when the profile was retired (changelog §12).

Four ways to hold the same risk — 2007–26

The same sleeves, four ways: buy SPY and hold; the static four-sleeve basket from Part 2 (SPY, QQQ, gold, managed futures, fixed weights); inverse-volatility over those four (quarterly, trailing 12-month vol); and the nine-sleeve regime model as run today (six-cycle conviction, fast-cut, momentum tilt, net of 0bp one-way). Sharpe is excess over T-bills. Closed months only, Feb 2007 to Sep 2026: the month in progress is left out, as in the start-date study. The eras are a regime split, not out-of-sample validation — every rule was chosen knowing the full history.

Backtest 2026-10-29: neutral risk step 0.55, momentum tilt mom. Inverse-vol is the honest passive alternative: it keeps most of the static basket's return with less drawdown, and the regime model's edge over it is the drawdown, not the return.

Spending from the books — the Macro Tide Harbor and the others under withdrawals

The Macro Tide Harbor is built for a 5%/yr withdrawal: the same engine with a hard 10% cash floor (2 years of spending) that tops the cash sleeve up, never adds to it. The glide never spends the cushion: when the model returns idle cash to the risk sleeves after a bottoming signal, it deploys only what sits above the floor, so the 2 years of spending are intact in every month of both test samples. The other lines are shown under the same withdrawals with no floor of their own. Below: withdraw the dial's rate of starting capital every year (monthly, not inflation-indexed) from 2007 to today, and over every rolling 10-year window. Start 100. The Conservative and Balanced profiles were retired (changelog §12).

Nominal withdrawals of starting capital; indexing them to inflation makes every line harder, the 6% dial most. The floor costs a little return in high-conviction months (it binds only when the model wants less than 2 years of spending in cash) and buys liquidity, not drawdown protection: the client never sells the engine to fund a withdrawal. Backtest 2026-10-29.

Commentary

Not investment advice. Hypothetical framework output computed on public data (FRED + Yahoo Finance); past performance does not predict future results. This is a research and education note, not a recommendation.

© 2026 Nemdhari LLC. All rights reserved. The Macro Tide framework — its six-cycle regime gauge, conviction score, allocation rules, indicators, code and model portfolios — is the proprietary intellectual property of Nemdhari LLC. Research and education only; not investment advice, not an offer or solicitation, and not a recommendation for any person. Hypothetical and model results do not reflect actual client accounts; past performance does not predict future results.

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