Seasonality
/intel?view=seasonalityWhat it answers
Which calendar windows have historically paid on an instrument, how sharp the bias is, and how rare it looks once you account for the size of the search that found it.
When to open it
- Before taking a position over the next few weeks: Clock lists every window opening inside your horizon, strongest first, and draws them on a date axis.
- To test a window of your own. A bias you already follow — year-end strength, the September dip, the gas cycle — can be drawn straight onto the average year and scored on the spot.
- To filter the full register. Register opens every window kept across the whole year.
- To set a risk calendar. Risk tells you which months carry the most realised volatility, instrument by instrument.
- To check whether there is a physical cause. Why puts physical stocks and positioning next to the instrument's price windows, where the lake carries them.
Anatomy
Four modes, selected in the header: Clock, Register, Risk, Why. To their right, a pill gives the build date — green dot = built today, amber = older, with the number of days behind.
Across the top runs the seasonal clock: every window opening within the horizon on a real date axis, with On the clock beside it (the count, the horizon, the top strength). Below it, three columns: the list on the left (the clock's windows, the register's filters and results, or the instruments Why covers), the window in the middle, and the Watching and Consensus rail on the right. Risk takes the whole width.
The window, the mode and the horizon live in the address: a link reopens exactly the window you were reading.
How to read it
The two scores
They recur everywhere in the view. Both run 0–100.
| Score | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Strength | How sharp the bias is, as a rank against every window in the register: the size of the average move, how consistent it is year to year, and how many years back it goes. It is the default sort of every list. |
| Rarity | What the window is worth once measured against the size of the search: beats N% of random windows. A spectacular window found among tens of thousands of attempts is not the same thing as a spectacular window found on its own. |
| RARE | The badge appears only on top-tier windows. A row without one carries no label at all — the call is yours. |
The seasonal clock
One bar per window, from a week back to the end of the horizon, packed into lanes so none hides another.
| Element | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Bar length | The window's duration, from open to close. |
| Colour | Green Long, Red Short. |
| Opacity | Rarity. Solid = clears the search comfortably; faint = not rare. |
| The dotted TODAY line | The build date. Everything to its right is still ahead of you; the shaded stretch to its left has already opened. |
| Hover | The window's dates and length, its side and average move, its record and its strength. |
On the clock gives how many windows open within the horizon, the horizon buttons (14d, 30d, 45d, 90d), the top strength and how many windows are rare. Changing the horizon changes how demanding Rarity is: a window is more remarkable inside a six-week search than inside a twelve-month one. The dim line gives coverage: instruments swept, windows tested on each.
Clock · the list
| Element | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Rarity | All, 80+, 95+: a floor on the score. |
| Class | Asset class, with the row count per chip. |
| Strength / Soonest | Sort by the score, or by when the window opens. |
| A row | Ticker and name; open and close dates, length, and when it opens (+9d, or open · day 11 once it runs); side and average move; the record (100% of 11y); the strength with its bar, RARE where earned, and ☆ to pin it. |
Register
The full-year register, filterable.
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Leads | Five one-click entry points: Perfect records, Opening this month, Beats 95% of random, Big movers, Short windows. Reset clears everything. A lead only sets filters — they stay visible and editable below. |
| Rarity / Class / Side | Rarity floor, asset class, direction (Both, Long, Short). |
| Days | Length band: Any, 5–15, 16–30, 31–60, 61–90. |
| Opens | Opening month. |
| Min hit | Hit-rate floor, up to 100%. |
| Sort | Strength, Rarity, Soonest, Hit, Size, Length. |
The count gives how many windows match, out of how many were searched per instrument. Results page sixty at a time.
The window
What opens in the middle column, whichever list you picked it from.
| Block | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Head | Class, name, and where the window was found (found in the 45-day clock, or the full year); its dates, length, side, when it opens, and this year's dates. RARE, ☆, and Why › when a driver is tracked. |
| The read | Five lines in words. Record: how many years it paid, the average and the median. Range: best and worst year, and what the position sat through on the way. Score: the strength rank and the rarity. This year: when it opens, or how the running cycle compares with its typical path. Calendar: how many high-impact releases fall inside it. |
| Strength / Rarity and the figures | Both scores, large; then Mean, Median, Won (9 / 12), Best, Worst, Effect (mean ÷ spread across years), t, Profit factor and Annualised — the last is there for comparison, never for ranking. A median far from the mean means one or two years are carrying the average. |
| The average year | The instrument's average year with its p10–p90 band. Everything outside the window recedes rather than disappearing. Grab the handles and move them: everything reprices live while you drag (a live note appears under the scores), then settles on the server's own numbers the moment you release. You can also draw a window from scratch by dragging on the plot. The Known chips snap back to the windows the register kept on this instrument. |
| Every year | One bar per year: paid / lost. Look for consistency, not height — two enormous years and ten flat ones are not a season. |
| The path | The trajectory inside the window, day 0 to the close, with its envelope and each year faint behind it. Tells you when the move happens: early, late, or spread out. |
| This year's cycle | So far = the move since it opened, against the Typical to date. On script = how closely this year is following the usual shape. |
| Along the way | Avg heat and Worst heat = what the position sat through; Avg run = what it gave in the right direction. The average move says nothing about the path to it. |
| High-impact releases inside it | The releases landing inside the window, with the calendar load (light, moderate, heavy): date, UTC time, name and country. Each opens its release in Macro, in a new tab. |
The rail
Watching keeps your pinned windows, wherever they fall in the year. Only their coordinates are stored; the statistics are recomputed on every read. no history = the instrument has too few years to score that window.
Consensus groups the windows several related instruments agree on within the horizon. FX pairs are decomposed into currencies first, so a single row can cover eight pairs. The statistic shown is the equal-weight basket's, not an average of its members. Expand a cluster to see its members — dissenters included: a member whose move runs the other way is information, not an error.
The note underneath gives the build: instruments, windows searched on each, the random rotations Rarity is measured against, and its age.
Risk
| Block | How to read it |
|---|---|
| The market's calendar | Twelve bars around a line. Each counts the instruments whose month ranks above their own midpoint, out of the total (28/42). Above the line = a month busier than usual across the universe, below = calmer. The colour lifts when the sign test puts the count well past chance (p < 0.05, p < 0.001). |
| Realised volatility · month of year | One instrument per row, grouped by class, twelve months across. Typical = its usual level. Each cell gives the month's median annualised volatility; the tint shows where the month ranks inside each year (darker = busier). A dot marks a month that stands well clear of noise for that instrument. |
| Spread | The busiest month ÷ the calmest. High = a pronounced risk calendar; close to 1 = flat volatility all year. |
Hovering a month or a cell gives the detail: median volatility, its ratio to the usual level, its rank within the year, and how many years the reading rests on.
Why
| Block | How to read it |
|---|---|
| The list | The instruments the lake carries a physical stock or managed-positioning (CFTC) series for. |
| Series cards | Each series month by month, on the same calendar as the price. The header gives the source, the years covered and the number of observations. Months whose move is sharp read solid, the rest are dimmed. |
| Card footer | The series' unit, then a comparison between two eras (ρ). High correlation = a profile that has held; low = a driver that changed shape, and should not be extrapolated. |
| Price windows | The same instrument's strongest windows, so the price bias can be read against the driver directly above it. |
Controls
| Gesture | Effect |
|---|---|
| Click Clock / Register / Risk / Why | Switch mode. The class filter is shared across modes. |
| Click a horizon | Change the depth of the sweep — and rescore Rarity against it. |
| Click a bar on the clock, or a row in a list | Opens that window in the middle column. From Risk or Why, a bar on the clock switches back to Clock. |
| Drag a handle on the average year | Redefines the window. The numbers follow the gesture and settle on release. |
| Drag on the plot, away from a handle | Draws a new window, in either direction. |
| ← / → on a focused handle | Nudges by a day; with Shift, by a week. |
| Click a Known chip | Snaps back to a window from the register. |
| Click ☆ | Pins the window into Watching. Click again to unpin. |
| Click Why › | Switches to Why for that instrument. |
| Click a price window in Why | Opens it, in Register. |
| Click a release | Opens Macro on that release, in a new tab. |
| Click a column header in Risk | Sort by that month, the typical level or the spread. Click again to return to classes. |
Cross-check with other Hawkline features
- A window opening soon: Trend matrix to check that current momentum runs the same way. A season fighting the regime is not a signal, it is a conflict.
- A currency cluster: COT for non-commercial positioning, FX for present relative strength.
- A heavy release inside the window: Macro carries its reaction history.
- A window that overlaps a desk call: Theses and Brief.
Keep in mind
- The register is small on purpose. Out of tens of thousands of windows tested per instrument, very few come out carrying the RARE badge. That is the expected result: searching that wide mechanically produces beautiful curves on instruments with no seasonality whatsoever, and Rarity exists to throw them out.
- A window needs at least eight years to be evaluated at all. Median history runs to around ten years, so some instruments never surface, and a window scored on eight years is still a window scored on eight points.
- A window you draw yourself is judged against the whole year. No narrow sweep found it, so its Rarity is measured on the widest scope — and will often land below the same window opened from a horizon. That is the honest number, not a regression.
- Strength ranks, it does not forecast. A window at the top of the list is the best-formed one in today's register, which commits to nothing about the year ahead.
- Everything rests on a daily build. The header pill gives its age; a late build serves yesterday rather than nothing. Only the window itself recomputes against the day's prices.
- Why only covers instruments with a tracked driver. No series ≠ no cause: Hawkline simply doesn't track one for that instrument.
- The release list is not exhaustive. It keeps only high-impact releases from the economies attached to the instrument.