McDonald's was the top long in yesterday's brief. This morning it reads bearish. Microchip, Dollar General and Bitcoin flipped with it. That is what happens when price sits on the institutional anchor: the bias is decided by whichever side closed the last bar, and the terminal reports it honestly rather than smoothing it. Two setups escaped the churn. CF Industries is the only live signal on the sheet, a tier-2 long with a passing deviation gate and a 91% record on 11 of 11 resolved. Occidental broke out on a fresh tier-2 print with 18 of 18 resolved behind it. Every index gate is shut again, all four of them. The one number is McDonald's anchor, where price and the institutional cost basis are the same figure to two decimal places.
July CPI is released Wednesday at 8:30 Eastern, and it is the only thing on this week's calendar that can move the policy path. The Fed has now held at 3.50% to 3.75% for five straight meetings, but three members dissented in July in favour of a hike, which is why the September meeting is live in a direction almost nobody was positioned for six months ago. Consensus looks for headline CPI up 0.1% on the month and roughly 3.4% on the year, with core near 2.5%. A soft print keeps the record highs intact. A hot one reprices September, and the rally has been built on the absence of a hike rather than the promise of a cut.
INFLATIONARY PUMP at +5/9 means equities and risk assets are on, bonds are off, and a long book is still being scored with the framework rather than against it. Composite slipped one point from yesterday's +6/9, and the caveat has not moved: the index and crypto feeds read +3/9 with a bond-equity correlation of stress recovery 0.49 or 0.50, well through the 0.35 line where bonds stop hedging equities, while the single-name feeds read a normal 0.34. Own the names, not the indices.
The divergence flag is lit for a fifth session. What makes today worth the strip is that the fast measure improved while the slow one kept bleeding, which is the signature of a bounce inside a narrowing advance rather than a broadening one.
| Metric | Universe scan | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Divergence flag | ACTIVE | Price rising, participation lagging. Fifth session. |
| A/D net | +14 on 44 advancing | Unchanged from yesterday, to the share. |
| A/D ratio | 1.47 | Unchanged. |
| McClellan | −62.4 | Still negative, improved from −74.7. |
| A/D line | +1,530 | Down from +1,622. |
| Summation | +11,525 | Down from +11,587. Fifth day lower. |
| % above 50-day | 59.5% | Unchanged. |
| % above 200-day | 63.5% | Up from 60.8%. The one real improvement. |
Three measures frozen, two lower, two higher, flag still on. That is enough to own individual names on their own signals and not enough to buy an index sitting 4.62% above its anchor.
| # | Ticker | Dir | Entry (dev · price) | Edge (WR · Conf · Comp) | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CF | Long | 🔒 Members | 91% on 11 of 11 · Conf 5 (3F) · Signal 2 live, Dev PASS | Mid-Range, standard |
| 2 | OXY | Long | 🔒 Members | 78% on 18 of 18 · Conf 4 (1F) · Tier-2 print live | Mid-Range, standard |
| 3 | MCD | Short | 🔒 Members | 90% on 30 of 30 · Conf 6 (2F) · Building 81% | Equity Daily, standard |
| 4 | GILD | Long | 🔒 Members | 100% on 6 of 11 · Conf 5 (1F) · COILED 73% | Mid-Range, standard |
| 5 | BTCUSD | Short | 🔒 Members | 67% on 9 of 11 · Conf 7 (2F) · COILED 67% | Equity Daily, half size |
| 6 | RXRX | Short | 🔒 Members | 89% on 18 of 20 · Conf 7 (3F) · Expanded 71% | High-Vol, reduce 30–40% |
| 7 | MCHP | Short | 🔒 Members | 71% on 14 of 14 · Conf 6 (3F) · Expanded 26% | High-Vol, reduce 30–40% |
| 8 | RBC | Long | 🔒 Members | 100% on 1 of 3 · Conf 6 (2F) · Building 89% | Mid-Range, half size |
| 9 | NVDL | Short | 🔒 Members | 92% on 12 of 14 · Conf 6 (3F) · Expanded 0% | High-Vol, reduce 40–50% |
| 10 | DG | Short | 🔒 Members | 83% on 6 of 7 · Conf 5 (1F) · Building 94% | Mid-Range, half size |
| 11 | CRSP | Long | 🔒 Members | 85% on 20 resolved · Conf 6 (2F) · Expanded 35% | High-Vol, reduce 30% |
If you watch one: CF Industries. It is the only name on this sheet carrying a live signal tier rather than a setup waiting for one, and it is the only passing deviation gate in the scan, which adds a confluence factor instead of merely permitting an entry. Eleven signals fired, eleven resolved, 91% hit rate. McDonald's has the deeper sample at 30 of 30 and the tighter location, but it is short today and long yesterday, and a name that changes its mind that fast is a name you enter on confirmation. Occidental has the cleaner breakout. CF has the signal. Its band, the close it needs, and the price that ends it are all below.
Enter your Cantillon Research subscriber email to unlock the complete August 11 brief: the CF Industries band under the only live signal in the scan, the Occidental breakout level and the close that confirms it, the McDonald's anchor where price and institutional cost basis are the same figure, the exact four names that flipped sides since yesterday with both readings side by side, the overnight gap check on every row including the two shorts whose location improved while you slept, plus the annotated IVT terminal chart for all sixteen instruments scanned.
Dev · percentage distance from the institutional VWAP anchor, the volume-weighted price institutions actually paid. Dev Filter · PASS means price is close enough to that anchor that the entry is priced well and the reading adds a confluence factor; OPEN means inside the band; FAIL means too extended for a clean new entry. Gate shuts at · the price where the deviation band is exceeded and no new entry qualifies. Conf (XF) · institutional confidence score confirmed across X timeframes. Higher is better. COILED / Building % · volatility compression. Higher means a larger expected move when it releases. COILED is maximum; Building is partial; Expanded means no coil is loaded. None of them state direction. Conv / Convergence · how tightly the institutional anchors are stacked. ACTIVE with a high percentage means a real cluster of institutional cost basis underneath; Diverged means no cluster. WR (n of m) · win rate across m signals that have fully resolved out of those fired. Open signals are excluded, which is why n of m matters as much as the percentage. Signal tiers · S1 is the base crossover; Signal 2 adds two independent confirming factors; Signal 3 adds four; Signal 4 adds six plus regime alignment. Snapback (SD2L) · the oversold reversal signal fired two standard deviations below the anchor. Bar count is how long ago it fired. Anchor return · the cyan label marking price pulling back into the institutional anchor in a confirmed trend and reclaiming it on volume. Composite · the sum of the nine active Cantillon layers, maximum +9. Macro bonus · the regime's tailwind or headwind applied to every trade. Bd-Eq Corr · 60-bar rolling correlation of bond and equity returns; above 0.35 the two are treated as one risk and bonds stop hedging equities. Tiers · High-Volatility strict (size down 30% to 40%), Mid-Range (+5pp band), Equity Daily (+10pp band).