Most traders see two states: trending, or not. MarketColor sees 26. It reads the market’s current condition — momentum, bias, volatility, type — and names it, in color, for every market, every day. The same read, on every chart you trade.
“The market is in a bull trend. Today was a correction and a big squeeze, and it got me. Nothing about the bull trend has changed — only my position is lighter.”
Most traders see state as a general condition: trend or non-trend. Markets are more complex than that. Every general state holds a set of signature states, each with its own behavior — and that granularity is where the read lives. Read these three as “bull trend” and you will press into a pause and chase into a correction.
Momentum is expanding and the pace is picking up. Pullbacks are shallow and short. Continuation is the expectation; the risk is chasing it late.
The trend pauses to absorb its gains. Price moves sideways in a range above prior structure. Patience is the play — the trend has not ended, it is resting.
Price gives ground inside a positive context. Sharp, emotional moves against the trend. A pullback, not a reversal — until structure says otherwise.
You are not reacting to events and chasing opportunity.You are anticipating price behavior and participating in it.
A breakout strategy and a correction strategy need opposite conditions. Start with the strategy you trade; the state tells you where it belongs. The grid shows every market by its condition. The ranking table sorts them by the measure that matters to you.
The MarketColor Ranking Table lets you compare and sort markets by their technical condition — from trending and accelerating to correcting or moving sideways. Start with your strategy, then find the markets in a state that supports it.
Open one state — NEUT, Neutral Digestion Transition — as it appears in the Playbook, beside the chart it was called on.
What the market should do if it performs to its state, the tells that confirm or deny it, and the contingency when it transitions. The strategy themes and the risk posture that fit the condition — written before the session, so you are not working it out under pressure. And it is unified: any market, any asset class, in NEUT carries the same expectation.
A NEUT is a NEUT in any market, any asset class.Same state, same expectation, same read. That is the power of the process.
The strategy you can follow under pressure is the one built around how you actually behave under risk.Four steps, in order.
How you operate under risk — where you press, where you freeze, where discipline breaks.
A strategy, a mandate and a risk limit aligned with who you are. Rules you will keep.
The market conditions that complement that strategy — where it is built to work.
The markets in those states, today. That is what the grid and the rankings are for.
The Personality Profile maps how you behave when capital is at risk — the tendencies that decide whether a plan survives contact with the market. Your report is generated the moment you finish, and it is what Navigator calibrates to when you subscribe. Ten minutes. The first input to a trade plan you will keep.
A state holds while its structure holds. MarketColor identifies the condition. PriceMap supplies the levels where the market decides — persist and stay aligned with the state, or break structure and transition to a new one.
Same state, different structure, different expectation. A UPT with sentiment below the market is trending. A UPT with sentiment above the market is corrective. The state names the condition; structure sets the expectation.
State tells you the kind of market you are in. Structure tells you where that state holds, and where it breaks.One without the other is half a read.
06 · Origin Story
By the late 1990s, SOES stock traders wanted the analytics we applied to the major indices across lists of 50 or 100 individual names. The manual process could not scale.
I did not need another signal or trading system. I needed an objective answer to a more basic question: What state is each market in?
I built MarketColor to classify that condition — trending or nontrending, pivotal or extreme, accelerating or corrective — and organize a large market universe around those states.
That changed the process. Instead of starting with a market and searching for a trade, I could start with the state and focus on the strategies built for that condition.
That remains MarketColor’s role inside MKT.TRADE: define the state first, so the Playbook can frame the Strategy Themes expected to influence price action.
John Slazas · Founder, MKT.TRADE
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MarketColor defines what kind of market you are in. The next layer defines what to do in it.