Repeated option-premium prints and a four-zone regime map

A stall, not a one-day blip

The option-premium ratio compares listed put price premiums with call price premiums. It is used as a crowd-pricing gauge rather than a contract-count put-call tally. In the historical workflow, one daily print was not treated as a finished reading. Two matching daily values, consecutive or separated by as many as seven sessions, were treated as a repeated identical print: a sign that equity-market sentiment had held still.

The sample range and the median reference

In the sample from 1986, daily ratio values ran from 0.03 to 1.74. Prints below 0.29 appeared only in bear markets. Prints above 1.18 appeared only on strong bull legs. Most values sat between 0.29 and 1.18, and the median reference stayed in the low to mid-0.60s. A stall was then judged cheap, rich, or neutral against that center.

Below-median and above-median clusters

Matching readings in the 0.40 to 0.54 area, back to back or spaced by one to seven sessions in the documented sub-bands, were followed by significant industrial-average advances in the case tables. More than half of the two-to-seven-day-gap cases climbed over 149 points. That is the below-median cluster: matching prints well under the median, historically associated with later advances except at crash-level extremes.

Matching readings well above the median form the above-median cluster. Consecutive prints from 0.70 to 0.77, prints from 0.78 to 0.86 three or four days apart, and prints from 0.80 to 0.88 five to seven days apart were followed by significant industrial-average declines in the case tables, except at euphoric extremes.

Near-median confirmation

Near the median, consecutive matching prints were not read on their own. They were paired with the industrial average's own two-day change. A rise of more than 5 points with matching prints from 0.61 to 0.66 accompanied further advances. Matching prints from 0.63 to 0.67 without that rise accompanied later declines, with a median loss of 127 points in the latter group.

When the usual map inverted

At extremes the usual map inverted. Consecutive matching prints above 0.88 were followed by advances of more than 100 industrial-average points. Consecutive matching prints under 0.30 were followed by a short bounce and then declines of about 200 points.

Matching prints above 0.92 separated by one session were followed by declines of nearly 200 industrial-average points or more. That pattern rested on three recorded cases. It sits beside the consecutive high-extreme band rather than replacing it.

Editorial reading for a single equity idea

Editorial interpretation: a repeated identical print is only the first step. The stall still has to be placed on a four-zone regime map: below-median cluster, above-median cluster, near-median confirmation with index drift, or extreme inversion.

TradersWeek treats that stamp as a contrarian regime filter. It converts the premium mix into a market-regime context so a single equity idea can be aligned with crowd pricing, faded against it, or withheld, on a weeks-to-months horizon. That use is editorial. The archive described the historical workflow and the case tables. It did not assign a present-day trade.