The Bias Desk — Score review

Before you read

What you’ll see on the desk.

• The score — one number from −1 to +1, recalculated every thirty seconds.
• The call — the score turned into words: Very Bullish · Bullish · Slight Bullish · Neutral · Slight Bearish · Bearish · Very Bearish. Neutral is the band from −0.10 to +0.10.
• Two views of the same score — Intraday (15-minute, for trades held an hour to a session), Daily (4-hour, for swings).
• Three readings that make up the score — Trend, Delta and Flow. Each has its own sign, so you can see which one is behind the call.
• Market context — next to NQ and ES, four groups (Indices, Macro, Sectors, Top 8 stocks) shown as supporting or opposing the call.
• Points are index points: 50 NQ points is $1,000 per contract; 10 ES points is $500.

Jump to

• Part 1 · Is the call right about now?
• Market context
• Part 2 · How fast does it change?
• Part 3 · What can you do with it?
• One session, start to finish
• The last week
• How much room to give a call
• At a new low
• Limits of this study

Accuracy

Yes — most of the time.

• When the Intraday view says Bullish or Bearish, the last 4 hours of price went that way 77% of the time (NQ). Daily: 72%.
• Ask the same call about the next move and it drops to 46–51% — a coin flip. That is the honest line, and it’s on every chart here.
• Neutral is its own call — covered next.

What you’re looking at

One row per view. The lime bars are how often the call matched what price had just done. The red bars are how often it matched what price did next.

Neutral is a call too

When the desk says Neutral, it’s because a call would have been unreliable.

• Inside the Neutral zone the score still leans faintly one way. If the desk had called that lean, it would have matched the market only 59–60% of the time on Intraday — and on Daily, 42–48%: worse than a coin.
• A Slight call matches 70–74%. A full Bullish or Bearish call, 73–88%. The stronger the call, the more often it’s right — and Neutral is the rung where the desk keeps quiet.
• Neutral does not mean the next hour will be quiet. After a Neutral call the market moves just as much as after any other. It means there is no lean to trade — so don’t trade direction on the desk’s say-so.

What you’re looking at

One row per view. Three bars each: how often the score’s lean would have matched the market inside the Neutral zone (faded), on a Slight call, and on a full Bullish/Bearish call.

By time of day

Best when the market is busiest.

• In the New York morning (10:30–12:00), the Intraday call matched the market 90% of the time on NQ. Overnight in Asia: 71%.
• The “next move” number is about 50% at every hour of the day. Lowest right at the New York open.

What you’re looking at

The same accuracy number, split by the hour of the day the call was made, for the Intraday view.

The two views

One call, two zoom levels.

• Intraday and Daily are the same engine on 15-minute and 4-hour candles.
• They differ in pace, not in accuracy. Time spent on Neutral: Intraday 20%, Daily 12%.
• How often the call switches sides: Intraday about 2 times a day, Daily a few times a week. A switch means the score crossed the whole Neutral zone — something real moved.
• Use the one that matches how long you hold. Don’t treat them as two separate opinions — Daily and Intraday agree 95% of the time.

What you’re looking at

Six small charts, one per measurement. Each shows Intraday and Daily side by side.

Market context

Four other views of the same state — and one caution.

• Next to NQ and ES the desk shows four context groups — Indices, Macro, Sectors, Top 8 stocks — and whether each supports or opposes the call.
• They move with the index, not ahead of it: same-candle agreement with NQ’s move of 0.55 (Indices), 0.39 (Top 8), 0.26 (Macro), 0.12 (Sectors), and nothing one candle later. Sectors is the most independent second opinion; none of them leads.
• Supported — three or four groups agree — confirms the state. What price does next is a coin, like any other call.
• Opposed — three or four groups against the NQ call — is a caution that paid out 60% of the time over the next four hours (interval 52–68%), median 31 points against the call. 143 cases, NQ only: ES has 50 and shows nothing yet.

What you’re looking at

Top: for each context group, two bars — how closely it moves with the index on the same candle, and on the next candle. Bottom: at the moment of each Intraday call, whether the context was supporting, mixed or opposed, and how often price then went the call’s way.

Speed

It moves with the market. Not after it.

• The score changes on the same candle as the price move. One candle later there is nothing left to catch up.
• We checked minute by minute too: no hidden delay inside the candle.
• At the one-minute level it runs about half a minute behind live price — that’s the age of the latest calculation, and no more.

What you’re looking at

Three panels, one per view. Each bar shows how closely the score’s change lines up with the price move a certain number of candles before or after.

Minute by minute

What “moves with the market” looks like on a 1-minute chart.

• 1-minute candles on top, the score underneath, for the first 90 minutes of one New York session on each market. Every session of the week, at 5-minute resolution, is in The last week.
• Watch the score turn with each swing — on the same minute, not a few minutes later.
• The shading shows the call in force: lime for Bullish, red for Bearish, clear for Neutral. The dotted lines are the edges of the Neutral zone.
• Checked across every minute in the record: the score and price turn on the same minute; the score runs about thirty seconds behind live price; and nothing happens in the ten minutes after.

What you’re looking at

Two charts, NQ and ES, Tuesday 8 September. Each is 1-minute candles with the score directly beneath. Hollow candle closed up, filled closed down.

What’s behind the change

Flow makes the flip. Trend backs it. Delta tells you if it has fuel.

• When the call flips, Flow jumps on that exact candle — from near zero to 0.33.
• Trend was already leaning that way and gets stronger. Delta barely moves — at the flip or after it.
• Nothing moves in the eight candles before the flip. The three readings change with price, not ahead of it.
• Delta’s job comes later: a big move without Delta behind it fades more often than one with it (Part 3). Read it as the fuel gauge, not the ignition.
• So a flip comes with a name: Flow-driven, Trend-backed — and Delta tells you what’s left in the tank.

What you’re looking at

The average shape of Trend, Delta and Flow in the hours around a flip on the Intraday view. The vertical line is the flip.

One session, start to finish

What the desk said on a real day, and what this page’s numbers would have told you about each call.

• NQ, Tuesday 8 September 2026, the regular session. Not chosen for how it turned out — it’s the most recent regular day in the record.
• Numbered circles on the chart mark each call that held 30 minutes or more. The shaded stretch is the midday chop.

What you’re looking at

The full session as 5-minute candles, with the 1-minute score beneath and the call in force shaded (lime Bullish, red Bearish, clear Neutral).

1. 09:42 — the desk goes Bearish at 29,533, Flow-led (Flow -0.57, Delta +0.03, Trend -0.12). The page’s room number says a 50-point pullback against this call resumes 4 times in 5. The call holds 90 minutes; price falls as much as 108 points in its favour and pulls back at most 45 against — inside that room — before a bounce takes the score back to Neutral at 11:11, +44 from where the call began.
2. 12:00–14:10 — mostly Neutral. Four short Bearish calls of 5–10 minutes each; price goes nowhere. This is the Neutral call doing its job: no lean, and the desk says so. Over the whole session the desk was Neutral 155 of 370 minutes.
3. 14:23 — Bearish again at 29,599, this time Delta-led (Delta -0.33, Flow +0.00) with Trend still positive at +0.21 — a mixed read, which the page says is the normal shape at a flip. It holds 78 minutes into the close: 79 points in its favour, 12 against, and ends +54 points lower than where it began.

The last week

Every regular session, 1–8 September, NQ and ES.

• Same picture for each day: 5-minute candles, the score beneath, the call shaded, and a numbered marker for each call that held 30 minutes or more.
• Under each chart: when the call started, how long it held, which reading led it, the best and worst it saw in points, and where price was when the call ended.
• A mixed week on purpose. Thursday the 3rd was a trend day and the desk held one call to the close on both markets. Friday the 4th on NQ was three calls that all ended a little under water. Read the week, not a day.

What you’re looking at

Ten cards — five sessions for NQ, then five for ES. Labor Day (the 7th) is skipped.

NQ

ES

How much room to give a call

A 50-point pullback usually isn’t the end. A 150-point one usually is.

• Price pulls back against the call all the time. The question is how deep before the call is done.
• Intraday NQ: after a 50-point pullback, the move went on to a new high 4 times in 5. After 100 points, a coin flip. By 150, the desk had usually already flipped.
• ES Intraday: 10 points resumes 7 in 10, 15 points is a coin, by 20 the desk has usually flipped. Daily works at about double these distances.
• This isn’t a forecast. It’s a measure of how much noise the call can absorb — and it’s the most practical number on this page.

What you’re looking at

Two charts, one per view. Left to right is how deep the pullback got. Up and down is how often the move then went on to a new high anyway.

Reading the state

What Delta adds — and when it doesn’t.

• Take the call, what price did in the last hour, and whether Delta agrees or disagrees with the call. That’s a market state you’d recognise on a chart.
• Desk is Bullish or Bearish, price flat for an hour, Delta quiet: price then goes the desk’s way — NQ 55%, ES 58%.
• Big move, Delta not behind it: the move is usually near its end — NQ 44%, ES 39–43%.
• Delta agreeing with a move that already happened adds nothing. Delta matters most when it’s missing behind a big move.
• Delta is shown with the corrected sign throughout this section.

What you’re looking at

One chart per market. Each row is what price did in the last hour. The three dots in a row are Delta agreeing / flat / disagreeing, placed at how often price then went the call’s way.

Examples · the two biggest Delta readings for each state, in each market · shown whether they worked or not

Bullish call, price flat, Delta agrees

The desk says Bullish, price hasn’t moved in an hour, and Delta agrees. Price then goes up about half the time (NQ 51%, ES 43%). Agreement without movement is not a setup.

Bullish call, price flat, Delta disagrees

Same picture, but Delta is leaning the other way. NQ 47%, ES 49% — slightly more likely to reverse than continue.

Bearish call, price falling hard, Delta agrees

Price has dropped hard and Delta is behind it. Whether it keeps going is a coin flip (NQ 49%, ES 45%) — the move is already in the price.

Bearish call, price falling hard, Delta disagrees

Price has dropped hard but Delta has stopped backing it. This is the one that fades: ES 43% — the move usually has less left in it than it looks.

At a new low

Two kinds of low bounced more often than the rest.

• Price makes a new 4-hour low. What happens over the next four hours depends on what the readings were doing at that moment.
• Everything agrees it’s a low — Trend, Delta and Flow all bearish: a bounce 68% of the time on NQ, 62% on ES.
• The score has already turned up while price makes the low — the low isn’t confirmed: a bounce 61% on NQ, 62% on ES.
• The messy middle — one or two readings against, no clear picture: about 50%. That is the baseline both of the above beat.
• None of this works at new highs (about 50% everywhere), and this was a summer in which dips got bought. Treat both as “this move is old” signals, not buy signals — and worth re-testing on new data.
• One caveat on the first: before 30 August the Delta reading was shown with the wrong sign, so “everything agrees” and “buyers quietly stepping in” can’t yet be told apart.

What you’re looking at

Dots for each combination of market, low type (hourly / 4-hour / daily) and how many of the three readings agreed with the low.

Examples of the second kind · the eight biggest unconfirmed 4-hour lows, shown whether they bounced or not

• Candles = price, 4 hours before and after the low; the shaded half is after. Hollow closed up, filled closed down.
• Red dot = the new low printing while the lime line (score, or Flow on ES) is already above its own low.
• Top-right = what price did over the next four hours.

NQ · score off its 4-hour low · top 8 · 4 of 8 bounced

ES · Flow against the 4-hour low · top 8 · 6 of 8 bounced