Reading the Index Heat Map

The Index Heat Map compresses an entire index into one screen: every constituent as a tile, sized by market cap, grouped by sector, and colored by what the Trifecta screen — or, in Price mode, the market itself — has done lately. This guide explains the views, the two modes, the timeframes, and the color legend, so the picture reads at a glance.

Three index views

The map covers the three indexes U.S. traders watch most: the S&P 500, the Nasdaq-100, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Switching indexes rebuilds the same picture from that index's membership: the big-tile landscape of the S&P 500, the technology-heavy Nasdaq-100, or the compact thirty-stock Dow. Membership is current membership — the map always shows the index as it stands today.

Tiles, sectors, and size

Each tile is one company. Tiles are grouped into labeled sector blocks, and a tile's area is proportional to the company's market capitalization, so the largest companies dominate the picture exactly as they dominate the index. A tile carries the company's ticker and, depending on mode, its signal state or its price change over the selected timeframe. Tapping a tile opens the detail: the company's recent signals in Signals mode, or its price context in Price mode, with a link through to the full stock page.

Signals mode and Price mode

The toggle at the top switches what the colors mean.

In Signals mode (the member view), tiles are colored by signal state over the chosen timeframe: whether the screen produced an early signal on that stock in the window, and whether it confirmed. This is the map's distinctive view — instead of asking "what moved?", it asks "where has the screen been active?", which makes clusters visible: a sector lighting up with early signals is a different picture from one isolated name.

In Price mode, tiles are colored by price change over the timeframe, in the familiar heat-map convention. Price mode needs no account context and is the version shown on the public pages.

Timeframes

The timeframe control sets the window: Today, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 60 days, and Last 90 days. In Signals mode the window applies to when signals occurred — a signal is placed by its confirmation date when it has one, and by its early signal date while it awaits confirmation, so a confirmation landing today appears in today's windows even if the early signal came earlier. In Price mode the window is simply the period over which the price change is measured. Short windows show the current moment; the 90-day window shows the quarter's shape.

The legend

Signals mode uses three states. Confirmed — the signal met the screen's follow-up condition within the window. Early — an early signal occurred in the window and is still awaiting confirmation. Downtrend — the signal carries the track-record caution: a previous signal on the same name failed from a higher entry price, so the new signal is flagged rather than grouped. Everything else — the majority of any index on most days — is neutral: no signal in the window. The terms are defined in the Glossary, and the groups behind the signals are described in Using the Screener.

Grid and List on mobile

On a phone, tiles sized by market cap can shrink small companies to specks. The mobile toggle therefore offers three layouts: Map (the treemap), Grid (uniform tiles, every name equally readable), and List (names grouped by sector, ordered by market cap within each sector). The data is identical — only the geometry changes. On desktop, the map layout is standard.

Public pages versus the member view

Standalone public versions of the map — for the S&P 500, the Nasdaq-100, and the Dow — are available without an account, in Price mode only. The Signals mode, with its per-stock signal states, lives inside the member screener, where the map toggle sits beside the full filter set described in Using the Screener. Read together, the two modes answer complementary questions: Price mode shows where the market's weight has been moving; Signals mode shows where the screen has been finding its setups.

Educational material only — not investment advice.