What the two words mean
Risk-on. Investors are willing to hold riskier assets. They buy stocks, lend to weaker borrowers on easier terms and worry less about sudden swings.
Risk-off. Investors are moving toward safety. They sell riskier assets, ask more to lend and pay more for protection.
A scale, not a switch. The two words name the ends of a scale. Most days sit somewhere between them.
What tends to move in each
These are tendencies across markets in general, not rules, and not how Regime Card is calculated. Any one market can break from the pattern on a given day.
- Stocks. They tend to rise when risk is on and fall when it is off. Defensive sectors, such as utilities and consumer staples, tend to fall less when risk is off.
- Credit. The extra yield investors ask to lend to weaker companies tends to shrink when risk is on and widen when it is off.
- Volatility. Price swings, and the cost of insuring against them, tend to stay low when risk is on and jump when it is off.
- Rates. Government bonds tend to draw buyers when risk is off, which pushes their yields down. When risk is on, money tends to flow the other way.
- The dollar. It tends to strengthen when risk is off, as money looks for safety, and to soften when risk is on.
How Regime Card's five labels map to the idea
Regime Card places each US market day on that scale. A percentile from 0 to 100 ranks the day against the market's own history: 0 is the most risk-off reading, 100 the most risk-on. The percentile falls in one of five regimes:
The five regimes are laid out at the top of this page.
Mildly Off and Mildly On cover the days that lean one way without a clear signal. Neutral covers the days when the two sides roughly balance.
How to read today's reading
The percentile. Where the day sits on the scale, from 0 (most risk-off) to 100 (most risk-on). It is a rank against past readings, not a score.
The regime. Which of the five regimes the percentile falls in: the quickest way to read the day.
The date. One reading is published each US market day, after the 4:00 PM ET close, and settled at 4:30 PM ET. The label above the figure names the close it describes.
What it is not. A description of conditions today. It is not a forecast, and not advice to buy or sell anything.
The scorecard
Regime Card keeps score in public. The scorecard shows how the S&P 500 moved over the 5 and 20 trading days after each reading, and the record holds every reading as it was published, stored so that none can be changed after the fact without leaving a trace.
Returns by Regime shows what the S&P 500 did in the months after past days in each regime. These are base rates, not forecasts.
Common questions
Is the market risk-on or risk-off right now?
As of Nov 10, 2026, the US market is Mildly Off: the 15th percentile on Regime Card's scale from Risk-Off (0) to Risk-On (100). A new reading is published every US market day.
What does risk-off mean for stocks?
In risk-off markets investors tend to sell riskier stocks and move toward safer holdings, so stock prices tend to fall and swing more. How single stocks did after past Risk-Off days varies widely: see the Risk-Off ranking of US stocks. This is history, not a recommendation to buy or sell any stock.
How often does the regime change?
The regime changes only when the percentile moves out of one regime's range into another's. Of the 43 settled readings in the public record, which began on September 11, 2026, 8 named a different regime from the reading before.
What does Mildly Off mean?
Investors are turning cautious. Stress is building, and this is where market drops have often started. After past Mildly Off readings, the S&P 500 typically gained 0.9% over the next month. 1 in 10 times it fell 6.5% or more.