Prime Market Brief · Orientation
Five or six pages, once. What the brief is, how each section is read, the three-part model behind it, how it measures itself against the day that follows, and the ten words a new reader meets first.
Prime Market Brief is a daily description of market mechanics, published before every US open. It says which conditions are in force, who is positioned how and through which instruments, what the day's scheduled events can do to those positions, and where the money has moved since the last close. Every number in it carries the date and time it was observed; where a reading could not be taken, the brief says so instead of filling the gap.
It is written for readers who manage their own decisions: traders of their own accounts, advisers, small shops. It gives them the same kind of reading a desk starts its morning with, and leaves the decisions where they belong.
Those two lines govern every sentence. The brief will tell you that dealers are short gamma and what that does to a move; it will not tell you to buy the dip. It will tell you that options priced a ±0.7% day and the session went through it; it will not tell you what tomorrow brings. If a sentence ever reads as a tip, it is a mistake, and we would like to hear about it.
Each heading in an edition carries a small i button that opens the same guidance as below. Read the front page first; every line on it points to a section with the detail.
The front page: the shape of the day in a few sentences, then one line each on the releases, reports, positioning, rates and breadth that matter this morning.
Read this first. If you have two minutes before the open, this section is the brief; every line points to a section below with the detail.
Where money has moved since the last close: index, rates, energy and metals futures; index, sector and cross-asset funds; and the individual names moving most, with any cause on file.
Shows where positioning is adjusting ahead of the session and which moves have a reason behind them. It describes what has traded; it does not say where the open will be.
The size of move the options market is priced for today, and the prices where dealer hedging changes behaviour.
Tells you which levels change the character of the day, and whether a move is inside or outside what was priced. Before the open, options are not trading, so the implied move uses earlier quotes; the section says so when it applies.
The macro readings the brief works from: yields, real yields, inflation, credit spreads and volatility, and the conditions the model holds as in force.
Gives the backdrop every other section sits in. A move that runs against the conditions in force has to overcome them; one that runs with them has help.
Today's and the coming days' scheduled releases, and for each, who repositions on it and through which market.
Tells you when the day can change and which part of the market moves first if it does.
The next seven days of scheduled releases and the largest companies reporting.
Shows the events positioning is building toward, so a quiet day can be read in light of what is coming.
Who holds what: futures positioning from the CFTC by type of trader, crowded short positions, and names where options or short-sale activity ran far above normal.
Explains why the same news lands differently on different markets. A crowded position amplifies a move against it; a light one absorbs it.
Which sectors carry the most names under directional pressure at the days horizon, and whether that pressure comes from the index, the sector or the stocks themselves. Shown by sector only; the brief does not list individual names.
Shows where pressure is concentrated across sectors, and how much of the universe has a clear direction at all.
How many names are carrying the index, and how far apart sectors and factors are running.
Tells you whether a move in the index is broad or narrow. A narrow market rests on a few names and is more exposed to anything that hits them.
Company events typed since the previous edition, such as contract awards, guidance changes, regulatory actions and filings, and how the stock reacted.
Separates moves that have a reason on file from moves that do not.
The implied volatility surface for the S&P 500: how much movement options are priced for at each expiry, and the implied correlation between the index and its constituents.
Shows when the market expects movement and how much, which frames the implied move for today.
The previous edition’s levels, sector tilt and movers, measured against the session that followed.
An honest record of how the brief’s readings met the market. It measures the tape. The brief makes no calls, so there is nothing to score.
Underneath every edition is one chain with three links. A condition is a named market state the model holds as in force: a spread widening faster than its own history, a curve changing shape over five days, a company event typed from a filing. Each has a declared trigger, fires with a magnitude, and is held for a set window. Transmission is how a condition reaches prices: which participant it forces to act, through which instrument, at what speed. Positioning is what those participants already hold, and therefore how far the move carries once it starts.
The brief does not say a reading is bullish or bearish. It names the condition, states the mechanism, and reports the positioning, with dates. What happens next is the market's business; measuring whether the mechanism did what it does is the brief's, the next morning.
A worked example · 14 to 16 October 2026
Condition. On Wednesday 14 October the September CPI print came in above its run, 3.72% on the year against 3.35% in August. The model's high-CPI condition fired at 10:46 ET at near-full magnitude. Three days earlier a separate condition had fired in credit: CCC spreads, the weakest tier of high yield, had widened over 20 sessions faster than nearly all of their own history while the broad high-yield index was tightening.
Transmission. An inflation surprise reaches the two-year yield first, because that is where the policy path is priced; from there it reprices the longest-duration assets, which in equities are the largest technology companies. The brief said so before the print. By the close the front end had risen three basis points while the long end fell: a flattening, the shape of a policy repricing rather than a growth scare.
Positioning. The morning edition had recorded 146,000 SPY puts opened below spot against 47,000 calls above, and options priced the day at ±0.67%. Dealers were long gamma that morning. All three index funds closed outside their priced ranges on the downside. By Thursday morning net dealer gamma had flipped negative in all three funds, so hedging now followed the move instead of leaning against it, and the priced range doubled to ±1.25%. Thursday's session rallied the week's worst names from their pre-market lows; Friday gave much of it back.
None of that was a forecast. It was a condition, the channel it travels, and the book it landed on, each stated the morning before and measured the morning after.
The last section of every edition, "How yesterday's brief held up", measures the previous edition against the session that followed. It is the most institutional thing in the brief, because it is the part most publishers leave out.
A measurement that held is not a win and one that broke is not a loss; the brief makes no calls to win or lose. But a reader deserves to see where the mechanism did what it does and where it did not, in the same place every day, so that trust is earned from the record rather than asked for. When the brief itself gets something wrong, as it did with the mover figures in the editions of 14 to 16 October 2026, the correction is printed in the review of the affected editions, not quietly edited away.
The full glossary has 53 entries; inside an edition the first use of a term in each section links to its entry, and a hover shows the short definition. These ten cover most of a first reading.
Every section of an edition ends with a short "Why this matters" note: a sentence or two on the mechanism the section's readings take part in that day, and one line on what that does to the session. In Guided, the default for every new account, those notes stand open. In Compact, they fold behind their heading, one click to open, and the glossary links render as plain text. The switch is under the masthead of every edition and on your account page; it follows you between devices. The readings, the charts and the review are identical in both. Nothing is simplified in one and withheld in the other.
Updated 2026-10-18 · built from the section guides and the glossary, so it changes when they do · general information, not investment advice