Field guide
How to readthe observatory.
Three readings carry most of the site: a stock against its own 200-day line, how many stocks are above theirs, and five conditions counted together. Each is built below as a small working instrument on real data. Drag its control.
Instruments
Three readings, built
Fig. 1The 200-day line
Fig. 2Breadth, one bead per stock
Fig. 3The five-tumbler lock
The rooms
Seven rooms, one sky
- Sky →Every stock is a star; the horizon is its own 200-day average. Above it, the stock's long trend is up. Scroll for the week's story; press T for the telescope.
- Briefing →The five conditions and how far each is from flipping, what changed this week, and plain screens. Everything follows the time machine.
- Constellations →Which stocks move together (a correlation map) and which sectors lead or lag (orbits).
- Almanac →Ten years of the Nifty 50: every fall and recovery, the calendar of months, every NSE index.
- Lens →Any NSE stock: where it sits against its averages, its range, its sector and the market, with a live chart.
- Log →One dated entry a week, written by fixed rules and never revised.
- Laboratory →What followed past readings, set against every other day and a chance check.
Keys: 1–7 change room, [ ] step the week, \ back to now, ⌘K search, ? every key.
Terms
Every term, in a sentence
The exact formulas are on the methodology page.
Stocks
- Altitude
- How far a close sits above or below the average of the 200 sessions before it.
- 50-day altitude
- The same distance, measured from the average of the 50 sessions before the close.
- Breadth
- The share of stocks whose close is above their own 200-day average.
- The universe
- Every NSE mainboard stock in the EQ and BE series with a year of closes, plus every index member.
- Distance from the 52-week high
- How far a close sits below the highest close of the past year.
- New 52-week high or low
- A stock that closed at its highest (or lowest) level of the past year during the week.
- Crossing
- A stock whose close moved from one side of its average to the other during the week.
- Leaders
- Stocks above both their 50-day and 200-day averages and within 5% of their 52-week high.
- Turning and breaking
- Turning: crossed above its 50-day average this week. Breaking: crossed below its 200-day average this week.
Conditions
- Index trend
- Whether the Nifty 50 is above its own 200-day average.
- Fear percentile
- Where India VIX sits within its own history up to that week, from 0 (calmest) to 100.
- Depth
- How far the Nifty 50 sits below its highest close.
- One-month momentum
- The Nifty 50's change over the last month.
- Conditions score
- How many of the five conditions hold: index trend, breadth of at least 50%, fear below 70, depth above −10% and positive momentum.
- Distance to flip
- How far each condition's reading is from the line that decides it.
Rotation
- Sector rotation
- Each sector's trend and momentum relative to every stock observed, drawn as an orbit.
- Correlation weather
- How much Nifty 100 stocks have moved together recently.
History
- A fall
- A decline of 10% or more from a record close, followed until the index closes at or above that record again.
- Month return
- The Nifty 50's change from one month's last close to the next month's last close.
Instruments
- Week
- Each week is read at its last trading session; the newest week is read at the latest session.
- Time machine
- One control that moves every room to any of the last 52 weeks.
- Meteors
- The week's new 52-week highs rise as sparks and its new lows fall as shooting stars.
- Spectrum
- How every stock observed is spread by altitude, in 5% bins.
Questions
Asked often
- Is this investment advice?
- No. The Observatory describes market data by fixed rules. It never says what to buy, sell or hold, and its labels (Risk-on, Mixed, Risk-off) count conditions; they are not forecasts.
- Where does the data come from?
- Adjusted daily closes from Yahoo Finance, each stock's latest official close from NSE's bhavcopy, index memberships and sectors from niftyindices.com, and NSE's own pages for flows and indices. The methodology page lists every source with its status.
- How fresh is it?
- It is rebuilt every trading night after NSE publishes its closes; every page's footer says the session the data runs to. During the session, live breadth uses NSE prices refreshed each minute.
- Why are there no buy lists or price targets?
- Because the site is for observation and research. Lists such as the leaders screen describe where prices sit under a stated rule; they are not selections.
- Why is everything black and white?
- Colour would add a judgment (green good, red bad) the data does not make. Direction is shown with brightness, filled and hollow marks, and ▲ ▽.
- Can a result in the laboratory be trusted?
- Each one states how many independent cases it rests on and how often random days did as well. Most results are called chance or too few cases, which is what honest history usually shows.