The Market Dashboard
The board that answers what is happening right now: indices, movers, breadth screens, macro, news and the heatmap in one view.
MadStockAlerts Research · Updated August 28, 2026
What to take away
- It is the orientation surface, read before any single security.
- The screen cards are breadth measures, not lists of opportunities.
- Beyond Stocks and Currencies carry the cross-asset context.
- The board is real time or delayed according to the products held.
- Reading it in order takes about two minutes and saves a great deal more.
MAD Academy Training Video · 0:46
The Sixty-Second Orientation
The Market Dashboard exists to answer what kind of day this is, before you look at any individual security.
This lesson is part of a Stock Alerts + Tools plan.
What is on it
| Group | Cards |
|---|---|
| Market state | Index levels, Top Movers, World Markets |
| Breadth screens | Unusual Volume, Highest Volume, 52-Week Highs and Lows, New Highs, New Lows, Overbought, Oversold, Most Shorted |
| Cross-asset | Beyond Stocks, Currencies, Treasury yields |
| Macro | Economic Calendar, Atlanta Fed GDPNow |
| Context | S&P 500 Heatmap, Market News, Insider Trades |
The screens are breadth, not a shortlist
New Highs and New Lows are most informative as counts. Four hundred new highs against thirty new lows describes a broad advance; the same index gain with sixty new highs and two hundred new lows describes an index carried by a few large members. The individual names are the least interesting part of those cards.
Overbought and Oversold are RSI screens, and the RSI article is explicit that an extreme reading describes stretch rather than predicting a turn. In a strong trend those lists stay populated for weeks with the same names, which is the indicator working rather than a backlog.
Cross-asset context
Treasury yields, currencies and commodities frequently explain an equity move that makes no sense read on its own. A broad decline on a day when yields rose sharply is a discount-rate move rather than anything about the companies.
GDPNow is a nowcast of the current quarter built from data already released. It is a running estimate rather than a forecast, and it moves as each release lands, which makes it a useful summary of what the incoming data has collectively implied.
- 1RatesThe two-year and the ten-year, moving on data or on a speech
- 2The dollarUsually follows the rate move within hours
- 3CommoditiesPriced in dollars, so they respond to it mechanically
- 4Equity sectorsWhere the same move finally shows up as a rotation
Reading it in order
- 1Index and breadth firstIs the move broad or concentrated? The heatmap answers this faster than the movers list.
- 2Cross-asset secondRates, dollar, oil. Establish whether the cause is outside equities.
- 3Calendar thirdWhat has already been released today, and what is still to come.
- 4Individual names lastOnce the market's condition is established, a single security's move can be read against it.
The order matters because a stock down four percent on a day the market fell three is a different observation from the same stock down four percent on a flat day, and only the second is about the company.
Breadth against the index
An index is a weighted average, so it describes its largest constituents more than its typical one. Breadth measures ask a different question: how many securities participated, regardless of their size.
| Measure | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Advancers against decliners | How many rose and how many fell, today |
| New highs against new lows | How many reached a 52-week extreme, in each direction |
| Percentage above the 200-day average | How much of the market is in a longer-term uptrend |
| Equal-weight against cap-weight | Whether the average constituent kept up with the largest ones |
The interesting readings are the disagreements. An index at a new high while the number of constituents making new highs is falling describes a market being carried by fewer and fewer names, and neither number alone shows it.
Breadth is a description of participation rather than a signal. Narrow markets have persisted for long periods, and reading a divergence as a timing indicator is a considerably stronger claim than the measure supports.
Reading it in a fixed order
A dashboard presents many things at once, which makes it fast and makes it easy to read whatever catches the eye first. A fixed order removes that, and the order below moves from the widest context inward.
- 1Rates firstThe two-year and the ten-year. Most cross-asset moves start here, and an equity move with no equity cause is often already visible in yields.
- 2Then the dollarWhich usually follows the rate move, and which reaches multinational earnings and commodity prices mechanically.
- 3Then the index levelWhere the market is, which is the number every headline reports and the least informative of the five.
- 4Then breadthWhether the index move was broad or carried by a few large constituents. This is where an index level becomes readable.
- 5Then sectorsWhich parts moved, which converts a market observation into something specific enough to follow up.
The order matters more than the specific measures. Starting at the index means every subsequent reading is interpreted in light of a number that describes its largest constituents, and starting at rates means the index is read in a context that was already established.