Thursday Brief · August 13, 2026 · Elite Members

Four Indices At Maximum Compression. All Four Are Locked Out.

The S&P, the Nasdaq, the Dow and the Russell are the four most compressed instruments in this morning's scan at 99%, 98%, 92% and 87%. Every one of them fails the deviation filter, by a wide margin, so none of them appears as a trade below. McDonald's carries the highest confidence reading in the scan at 9 across two timeframes and the overnight print backs it. Ormat is the only name with institutional convergence live, at 76% strength. Breadth deteriorated on all seven measures overnight, the first clean sweep lower in the sequence. And the bond-equity correlation flipped sides: the index feeds are clean at 0.22 while the single names now read stress at 0.41, the exact inverse of yesterday. The one number is the single S&P level that reopens all four index gates in the same session.

Date August 13, 2026
Session Thursday · Captured Pre-Market
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Instruments 21 scanned
Market Update
CPI Came In Cool

July CPI printed +0.1% on the month and 3.4% on the year, well under the 0.6% and 3.6% the market had braced for. The oil shock that everyone expected to show up in the headline did not show up. The S&P closed 0.25% higher at 7,747.46, back within touching distance of records, and tech led. A committee that had three dissents pushing for a September hike just lost its best argument.

RegimeInflationary Pump
Composite+4 / 9
LayersLqd ✗ · Eq ✓ · Rsk ✓
VIX1.5 · Low Fear (15)
Macro Bonus+1
LeaderEquities
Bd-Eq Corr0.41 names · 0.22 index
Transition→ Stable

INFLATIONARY PUMP at +4/9 is up a point from yesterday and still scores a long book, but the S&P and Russell feeds read DISTRIBUTION at +3/9 with the risk layer off and the macro bonus at −1 rather than +1. Two feeds disagreeing on the same morning is the caveat, and it sits on the broad-market side. The correlation reading swapped ends overnight: single names now carry 0.41, above the 0.35 line where bonds stop hedging equities, while the index feeds cleared back to a normal 0.22. Yesterday it was the other way round. Size the names accordingly.

Breadth · Seventh Session, First Clean Sweep Lower

The strip runs today because for the first time in the sequence every measure moved the same way, and that way was down. Yesterday four were frozen and two were higher. This morning none of them are.

MetricUniverse scanRead
Divergence flagACTIVEPrice rising, participation lagging. Seventh session.
A/D net+6 on 40 advancingDown from +14 on 44.
A/D ratio1.18Down from 1.47.
McClellan−53.1Negative, worse from −51.5.
A/D line+1,488Down from +1,544.
Summation+11,414Down from +11,474. Seventh day lower.
% above 50-day54.1%Down from 59.5%.
% above 200-day56.8%Down from 63.5%.

Structural participation lost 6.7 points in one session, which is the largest single-day drop in the sequence. Enough to keep owning individual names on their own signals. Not enough to argue with a deviation filter that has already locked out all four indices.

The Board · Every Tradeable Setup, Ranked
#TickerDirEntry (dev · price)Edge (WR · Conf · Comp)Size
1MCDLong🔒 Members78% on 500 · Conf 9 (2F) · COILED 76%Equity Daily · Standard
2ORALong🔒 Members100% (3/3) · Conf 7 (2F) · Convergence live 76%Mid Range · Standard
3NXEShort🔒 Members75% (4/5) · Conf 7 (2F) · Dev PASS → +1FHigh-Vol · Half
4CEGShort🔒 Members86% (14/14) · Conf 7 (2F) · COILED 92%Mid Range · Standard
5CRSPLong🔒 Members85% (20/21) · Conf 8 (2F) · Expanded 51%High-Vol · Half
6MELIShort🔒 Members71% (7/10) · Conf 8 (3F) · Signal 2 live, Dev PASSMid Range · Half
7RIVNShort🔒 Members83% on 24/29 · Conf 5 (1F) · COILED 95%High-Vol · Half
8RXRXShort🔒 Members84% (19/20) · Conf 6 (2F) · Building 79%High-Vol · Half
9BGLong🔒 Members100% (7/8) · Conf 6 (1F) · Building 80%Mid Range · Standard

If you watch one: McDonald's. Confidence 9 across two timeframes is the highest reading anywhere in a 21-instrument scan, it is one of only two names carrying a compression coil outside the locked-out indices, and it is the only name in the top three where the overnight print moved with the call rather than against it. Ormat is the runner-up and has the better structural story, since it is the single instrument in the whole scan showing institutional convergence active. But convergence at 76% with a 1-of-2 stability count is a setup still assembling, and its win rate rests on three resolved signals. McDonald's has 500 bars of record behind it. The band, the close it needs, and the price that ends it are below.

Why no index trade appears, stated once. Compression tells you how big the next move should be. The deviation filter tells you whether you are being asked to pay for it. This morning those two readings point in opposite directions on all four US indices, and it is not close. The S&P sits at 99% compression and 4.39% above its institutional anchor against a 1.5% band. The Dow is at 92% and 4.31% out. The Russell is at 87% and 4.13% out. The Nasdaq is the nearest at 98% and 2.45% out, and it is still 0.95 percentage points beyond the gate. Buying any of them here is paying the full extension for the privilege of holding the coil. The names below are inside their bands, which is the entire reason they are on the sheet and the indices are not.
Elite Members Content

Full Board, Every Level & All 22 Annotated Charts

Enter your Cantillon Research subscriber email to unlock the complete August 13 brief: the McDonald's band and the close that confirms the highest confidence reading in the scan, the Ormat convergence zone and the level that ends it, the two names carrying a Dev Filter PASS and the one whose overnight print already argues against it, the exact price on all four indices where the filter reopens, the Toyota row whose trigger sits above its own gate, plus the annotated IVT terminal chart for all 21 instruments scanned.

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Legend

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 with room left; FAIL means too extended for a clean new entry. Gate · the price where the band is exceeded and no new entry qualifies.  Conf (XF) · institutional confidence score confirmed across X timeframes. Higher is better, and more timeframes is better at the same score.  COILED / Building / Expanded % · volatility compression. COILED is maximum, Building is partial, Expanded means no coil is loaded. Higher means a larger expected move when it releases. None of them state direction, and none of them override the deviation filter.  WR (500) · win rate over the most recent 500-bar window, published with the resolved-signal count in brackets. A rate quoted on fewer than ten resolved signals carries almost no information and is marked as such on the row.  Convergence · independent institutional models agreeing on the same zone at the same time, reported as a strength percentage. ACTIVE means live now; Diverged means they disagree and the percentage is how far apart.  Stability · consecutive confirmations of the current reading, out of two. 0/2 means the reading is fresh and unconfirmed.  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.  Swing Type · the multi-bar structural direction. It can disagree with the intraday Bias, and when it does the trade is being taken against the larger trend and is sized down.  Fit · the trend and chop filter. GREEN means full size, AMBER halves the position, RED means no new entries. Anchor Hold · how many bars the anchor holds per side before flipping; CHOPPY means it does not hold long enough to carry a swing. Expectancy (R) · average result per signal in units of risk, where a stop is always exactly −1.00R.  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, Mid-Range (+5pp band), Equity Daily (+10pp band). The tier sets the base position size before any other adjustment.

Readings captured Thursday 13 August 2026 between 06:24 and 06:48 CEST from the IVT v13.3 terminal. Timeframes are 4-hour throughout on bars that had not closed, which is the specific reason this brief triggers on closes rather than on touches. The trend and chop filter rows print on the Redwire capture only in today's scan; every other instrument returned the previous row set, so position sizing on all other rows falls back to instrument tier and is stated that way. Win rates are reported as the terminal prints them, including several on samples far too small to be meaningful; the resolved count is published next to every one so you can weight it yourself. The Cantillon Flow reading is not uniform this morning: the Dow, Nasdaq and single-name feeds return INFLATIONARY PUMP at +4/9 with a +1 macro bonus, while the S&P and Russell feeds return DISTRIBUTION at +3/9 with the risk layer off and a −1 macro bonus. Both are reported above and neither has been overridden. Index readings come from cash CFD feeds and will differ from your own cash index or futures contract, so convert and re-check every index level before acting. Institutional anchor prices and gate prices are derived from the terminal's deviation percentage rather than read directly and are approximate. Universe breadth figures were generated 12 August 2026 at 21:11 UTC. Several names show intraday Bias disagreeing with the underlying multi-bar Swing structure and are flagged individually; verify the higher-timeframe trend on your own screen before acting on any level here. Charts are unmodified terminal captures and are provided for reference, not as entry instructions. This brief is for informational and educational purposes only. Not financial advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results.