A single session's category heatmap tells you what happened that day. It does not, by itself, tell you whether a category is genuinely gathering strength or just had one good session. The difference matters, and it only shows up when you look at more than one day's heatmap together.
One day of green is not a trend
Fund categories move for all sorts of reasons on any given day — a budget announcement, a global rate decision, a single large constituent stock's earnings rippling through a sector fund. None of that tells you much about where the category is headed. What's more informative is whether a category keeps showing up near the top of the best-performing list across several consecutive sessions, rather than appearing there once and disappearing.
A practical way to track it
- Note the best-performing category on /funds for several consecutive sessions rather than just today's.
- Look for a category that appears in the top few repeatedly, not one that spikes once and vanishes from the top of the list the next day.
- Cross-check against the sector heatmap on Signal Desk — a fund category and an equity sector moving together over the same days is a more coherent story than either signal alone.
What this is not
Spotting a category gaining relative strength over a week is an observation, not a recommendation to buy into it. Fund categories that have recently done well are not guaranteed to keep doing well, and performance chasing is one of the more common mistakes retail investors make. The heatmap is a way to understand what is actually happening in the market right now — the decision about what, if anything, to do about it is a separate step that deserves more than a few days of heatmap data.
Because every /funds session is simply the most recently completed trading day's data, building this picture is a matter of revisiting the page on different days rather than needing any separate historical dataset.
Check today's category heatmap →Common questions
Is chasing the best-performing category a good strategy?
Not on its own -- recent outperformance is not a guarantee of continued outperformance, and performance-chasing is a well-known pitfall. The heatmap is for understanding what's happening, not a buy signal by itself.
How often does the best-performing category change?
It varies session to session; that's exactly why comparing several consecutive days' heatmaps, rather than reacting to one day, is the more reliable way to read it.
Should I switch my existing fund if its category falls out of favour for a week?
Not on a single week's signal -- short-term category weakness is common and switching funds has its own costs (exit load, tax, re-entry timing); this is an observation tool, not a trading trigger.
Does the heatmap show how long a category has been rotating, or just today?
The page itself renders the most recently completed session; building the 'how long' picture means comparing that day's heatmap against the previous several days' reports yourself, the same way the Signal Desk sector-momentum comparison works.
One session's best-performing category is mostly noise; a category that keeps appearing near the top across several consecutive days is a more durable signal worth noticing. Either way, this is an observation about what's happening in the market right now, not a recommendation to chase whatever category looked strongest last week.
