What kind of day is the market having?
We sorted every trading day since April 2019 into seven regimes. Here is what they look like, and why the latest day lands in the speculative one.
Ask ten investors what kind of market we are in and you will get ten answers. We wanted one consistent vocabulary, so we borrowed a tool from marketing: customer segmentation, with the trading day as the customer.
For every NYSE trading day since 15 April 2019, we measured how markets had behaved over roughly the previous month. That covers 20 descriptors in six themes: trend, fear, rates, AI leadership, growth vs value and cross-asset moves. Then we let a clustering algorithm group days that look alike. Seven groups came back reliably.
The seven regimes
| # | Regime | Share of days | S&P vs 200-day avg | VIX |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crash / panic | 2.4% | −10.8% | 49.1 |
| 2 | Bear market / rate shock | 10.5% | −7.3% | 27.5 |
| 3 | Rebound, growth-led | 10.4% | +1.7% | 23.2 |
| 4 | Reflation / rising yields | 10.5% | +5.0% | 21.4 |
| 5 | Late-cycle calm (flat curve) | 24.3% | +6.4% | 18.4 |
| 6 | Steady low-vol bull | 31.3% | +9.8% | 15.6 |
| 7 | Speculative / AI melt-up | 10.6% | +11.0% | 19.7 |
Two things stand out. First, calm is normal: more than half of all days fall in the late-cycle calm or the steady bull. Second, regimes persist. About 9 days in 10 sit in the same regime as the day before, and a typical spell lasts one to three weeks.
Why the latest day is “speculative”
On 24 September 2026, the latest day in our data, the market was in regime 7. In that regime the S&P sits furthest above its long-run trend. AI stocks beat the Nasdaq by about 7% in a month, and Bitcoin rises about 22%. The VIX is also higher than in the steady bull, at about 20 against 16. Investors pay up for the rally and for protection at the same time.
What this can and cannot tell you
Regimes describe the backdrop. They are useful for asking how a stock, a segment or a portfolio has behaved in different kinds of market. They do not forecast returns, and our model is fitted on the whole 2019–2026 sample, so its view of the past uses hindsight.
Explore every regime, the full timeline and the method on the Market regimes page.
Educational analysis, not investment advice. Past behaviour does not predict future returns.