A bull market is the macro regime where an asset class trades at least 20% above its multi-month low and the EMA50 sits above the EMA200 on the leading proxy symbol of that class. The 20% threshold is the standard finance-literature cutoff (Wall Street Journal, Investopedia, etc.) — anything less is correction noise, anything more is statistically a sustained trend.
The two-condition definition matters because either alone gives false positives. Just "+20% from low" can fire during a sharp counter-trend rally inside a bear market (a so-called bear-market rally — sometimes 20-30% in days, then back down). The EMA50/200 cross filter catches that: the moving averages move slowly enough that they only flip after the trend has actually held.
TradeOnyx computes the regime against the leading proxy of the asset class — SPX for stocks/indices, GLD for commodities, BTC-USD for crypto, the pair itself for FX pairs. Generic 'forex' has no proxy (relative quoting between pairs leaves no single asset to read), so the regime tile hides itself for that category.
A confirmed bull regime is the trader's risk-on permission slip. Concretely: - Bias direction: prefer long setups. Short-side trades take a higher bar (countertrend always does). - Sizing: at full plan size on aligned setups. Pullback buys + breakout continuations both work in this regime; both deserve normal size. - Stop placement: comfortable. The trend reasserting itself protects the stop. Tight scalp-stops are the wrong tool — let the structure breathe. - What kills returns in a bull: fighting it. Shorts get squeezed. Counter-trend reversals fire too early. The cheap discipline is to skip them entirely until the regime tile says otherwise. - What to watch for: deteriorating breadth (fewer stocks pushing the index) and a weakening EMA50 slope. The regime won't flip on a single bad day, but the lead-up is visible in those two signals.
TradeOnyx surfaces the bull regime as a gold-tinted illustration in the Briefing hero, top of the page. Hover the figure to see the trading-implication explainer. The regime updates per asset class — switching the asset-class picker (Stocks / Crypto / Commodities) re-reads the proxy symbol's price action and renders the matching state.
Use the regime read as a morning gut-check, not a trade signal. The card answers "what's the macro state I'm trading inside?" — it doesn't say "buy now." Combined with the Event Risk card (today's news calendar) and the Market Activity card (today's actual price movement), the three signals form the morning context: regime + risk + tempo. Most useful when they agree ("bull regime + low event risk + active tape" = a-grade conditions); equally useful when they conflict ("bull regime + high event risk" = trade smaller, expect whipsaws).