NYSE Advance-Decline Issues: Intraday Breadth & Extreme Prints
NYSE advancing minus declining issues — live breadth on the senior exchange — summarized per session since 2007: the day's participation bias, its ±2000 extreme prints, and an era-proof five-state read with forward SPY base rates. The finding is a symmetric U: washouts AND broad surges both led — one-sided NYSE tapes in either direction beat the quiet middle.
Today's reading
As of the July 13, 2026 close, NYSE breadth read Balanced: net advancers averaged -138 through the session (z -0.3 vs the trailing year), with no ±2000 extreme prints. Session extremes: +784 net advancers at best, -407 at worst. Since 2008, balanced sessions preceded +0.82% average SPY returns over the next 21 sessions vs +0.97% for all sessions.
Sources, methodology & freshnessLast updated 2026-07-13 · Open ↓Close ↑
Since 2008, balanced sessions preceded +0.82% avg SPY returns over the next 21 sessions (67% positive) vs +0.97% baseline — 1,591 cases. Context, not a forecast.
Intraday tape — the last sessions, 5-minute
The raw tape behind the daily aggregates: every regular-hours 5-minute bar of $ADD, plus the session-cumulative running total day traders watch for one-sided program days. Pick how many sessions to show; the data refreshes with the daily update after each close.
Session bias vs its own era
Each session's bias (blue) against its rolling one-year mean and ±1.5σ band (gray). The band IS the era adjustment — what counts as a washout or euphoric session moves with the market's structure, which is why raw TICK levels from different decades can't be compared directly.
Cumulative TICK — trend & divergence
The running sum of each session's bias, rebased to zero at the left edge of the window. The trend is the read: a rising line confirms the tape beneath a rally; price making new highs while cumulative TICK makes lower highs means fewer stocks are ticking along — the classic divergence warning. On the Max window the line partly reflects listing-count and structure changes across two decades of NYSE breadth. Use the shorter windows for the trading read.
What followed each state — full history
Forward SPY returns from every session in each z-score state since 2008. Both tails led: washout sessions preceded +1.3% and euphoric sessions +1.2% over the next 21 sessions vs +1.0% baseline — with the euphoric bucket carrying the highest win rate in the table (72%). The quiet balanced middle brought up the rear. On the senior exchange, broad participation in either direction was information; calm was not.
| State | % of days | Next 5 sessions | Next 10 sessions | Next 21 sessions | N |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washout | 8% | +0.34% · 60%↑ | +0.61% · 64%↑ | +1.26% · 66%↑ | 338 |
| Bearish tilt | 24% | +0.28% · 60%↑ | +0.41% · 61%↑ | +0.83% · 64%↑ | 1,082 |
| Balancednow | 35% | +0.14% · 59%↑ | +0.40% · 63%↑ | +0.82% · 67%↑ | 1,591 |
| Bullish tilt | 27% | +0.32% · 62%↑ | +0.55% · 65%↑ | +1.14% · 69%↑ | 1,210 |
| Euphoric | 6% | -0.03% · 59%↑ | +0.44% · 66%↑ | +1.24% · 72%↑ | 288 |
| All sessions (baseline) | 100% | +0.23% · 60%↑ | +0.46% · 63%↑ | +0.97% · 67%↑ | 4,509 |
Forward returns on SPY closes. States use the rolling one-year z-score of the session bias, so they are era-comparable. Overlapping windows — descriptive tendencies, not signals.
Extreme-print days — modern era (2010+)
Days when ±2000 net-issue prints actually hit the tape, 2010+ — real samples, hundreds of cases. Surge days (5+ prints at +2000) were the strongest bucket in the whole study: +1.9% average SPY returns over the next 21 sessions with a 73% win rate — the intraday echo of the 90% up-day and breadth-thrust literature. Washout-print days also led (+1.7%, ~1.6x baseline). Extreme one-sidedness ran; it did not fade.
| State | % of days | Next 5 sessions | Next 10 sessions | Next 21 sessions | N |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washout day (5+ −2000 prints) | 7% | +0.35% · 59%↑ | +0.53% · 61%↑ | +1.66% · 67%↑ | 290 |
| Heavy washout (10+ −2000 prints) | 6% | +0.33% · 58%↑ | +0.68% · 61%↑ | +1.68% · 67%↑ | 238 |
| Surge day (5+ +2000 prints) | 5% | +0.27% · 58%↑ | +0.70% · 66%↑ | +1.90% · 73%↑ | 220 |
| No extreme prints | 85% | +0.25% · 61%↑ | +0.48% · 64%↑ | +0.95% · 67%↑ | 3,538 |
| All 2010+ sessions (baseline) | 100% | +0.25% · 61%↑ | +0.50% · 64%↑ | +1.06% · 67%↑ | 4,162 |
±2000 counts are 5-minute bars whose high/low reached the threshold. Restricted to 2010+ where the print-frequency regime is stable. Overlapping windows — base rates, not signals.
How NYSE A/D Issues Works
- 1What the A/D issues difference isThe number of NYSE stocks trading above their prior close minus those below, printed through the session — live breadth on the senior exchange. A reading of +1500 means fifteen hundred more NYSE issues are up than down at that moment; the sign of the tape's participation, not its price.
- 2Aggregate each sessionFrom 5-minute $ADD bars (2007–present) we compute each session's BIAS — the average net-advancers reading, i.e. how one-sided participation was all day — and its EXTREME PRINTS: bars reaching +2000 (surge prints) or −2000 (washout prints), roughly the 3–4% tails of the modern distribution.
- 3Make it comparable across timeListing counts and market structure shift what a "normal" net-advancers reading is, so the state uses a rolling 252-session z-score of the bias — today versus the trailing year of itself.
- 4Classify the state — and attach base ratesFive states by z: Washout (≤ −1.5), Bearish tilt, Balanced, Bullish tilt, Euphoric (≥ +1.5). For each, what SPY actually did over the following 5, 10 and 21 sessions since 2008. The NYSE finding is a symmetric U: BOTH extremes — washouts and broad surges — preceded above-baseline returns; the quiet middle lagged.