A market regime is a description of the overall conditions a market is trading in, as distinct from the price of any single asset. The same news lands differently in a trending market than in a sideways one, so naming the regime is a way of stating the backdrop before discussing individual moves.
The four regimes MoonWire calls
Each prognosis issues one week-ahead regime read, chosen from four labels. Every label has a fixed grading rule, applied mechanically when the call expires:
- Risk-on — Bitcoin ends the period above its 20-day simple moving average and has risen by more than the flat band (currently 3%) over the call's horizon.
- Risk-off — Bitcoin ends below its 20-day SMA and has fallen by more than the band.
- Choppy — Bitcoin's return over the horizon stays inside the band (within ±3%): range-bound, whatever the headlines.
- Rotation — capital broadened into altcoins. This is graded on breadth: the share of large-cap coins (market-cap ranks 2–10) and of mid-caps (ranks 11–20) that out-returned Bitcoin over the period. The call counts as correct when at least 60% of the large caps beat Bitcoin — the early, broad and "altseason" patterns all qualify — and as incorrect when breadth instead shows Bitcoin leading or a mixed picture.
The basket of coins is frozen when the call is issued, so coins that crash out of the top 20 during the week still count. Without that rule the measured breadth would be flattered by survivorship.
Why objective rules matter
A regime label with no grading rule can be defended after the fact whatever happened. Tying each label to thresholds on data anyone can check turns the read into a forecast that can be scored — and scored against a base rate, with the result reported as a Brier skill score.
What a regime read is not
It is a description of expected conditions, not an instruction. A risk-on read does not mean every asset rises, and a choppy read can coexist with large moves in individual coins.