Two of Bitcoin’s Rarest Buy Signals Just Fired Together
Two rare Bitcoin buy signals fired this week. On-chain data shows spot demand reclaiming key levels. Equity breadth is near multi-decade extremes. None of this guarantees anything on its own. But it raises a real question: is this the kind of cluster that shows up near major bottoms? Or is the sample size too thin to trust? This issue walks through both sides.
What’s New on the Altcoin Screener
Before the market section, a quick site update. A lot has changed since the last issue, and it affects what you can access.
Here’s the honest reason for the quiet stretch. The screener was a manual job. It took a few hours, and it kept breaking. Publishing it competed with everything else, and usually lost. Both problems are fixed now. It runs itself early every Monday morning and finishes in about fifteen minutes. The results land on the site without me touching them. The cadence no longer depends on me finding a free afternoon.
The archive is complete again. 80 weekly snapshots, going back to August 2024, at altcoinscreener.com/screener-archive. Everyone gets the large-cap file for every week. Pro members get the full 300-coin universe for each week, with all the ranking, buy-zone and performance columns.
There’s also a new charts section at altcoinscreener.com/charts. That’s where most of the work went.
Three of the charts are free. The first shows the share of the top 300 beating Bitcoin over 30, 90, 180 and 365 days, with Bitcoin’s own price on a second axis. That second axis matters more than it sounds. Breadth rising while Bitcoin rallies is a broad advance. Breadth rising while Bitcoin falls is money rotating out of Bitcoin. The line looks the same either way. The price is what tells them apart. The second chart is median one-year performance by sector. Medians, not averages, so one outsized winner can’t drag a whole sector into the green.
The third is the PMI vs. Central Bank Rate Cuts chart used in this issue’s macro section, at altcoinscreener.com/charts/pmi-vs-central-bank-cuts. I used to rebuild it in TradingView by hand every month. Now it runs straight off the same Python pipeline that computes the correlation. The chart on the site is always the current reading, not a screenshot from whenever I last updated it.
Pro members also get a risk-versus-return chart. It plots all 300 coins by volatility against annualised return, colored by Sharpe ratio, with two years of weekly history on a slider.
What I’m building toward is a proper charting suite, closer to what checkonchain and lookintobitcoin do well. The plumbing is in place now. That makes adding a new chart cheap. That’s where the last few months actually went.
If there’s a chart or a column you’d use, tell me. That input matters more than anything else in deciding what gets built next.
1. Bitcoin: Rare Technical Buy Signals
Two rare signals fired in the same week
Bitcoin (Weekly Supertrend Buy Signal)
Bitcoin’s weekly Supertrend just flipped to a buy. This signal has fired 8 times since 2010, always near cycle lows or major bottoms. The 12-month track record: +109.99% median return, an 87.5% win rate (7 of 8 positive), and a worst-case drawdown of -65.61% along the way.
Bitcoin (Monthly Ultimate Oscillator Buy Signal)
Bitcoin’s Ultimate Oscillator just crossed above the 40 zone on the monthly chart. That’s only happened 5 times since 2015 (May 2015, January 2019, May 2019, February 2020, February 2023). Every prior instance was positive across every timeframe checked. At 1 year: +89% median (+117% average), 100% win rate. At 2 years: +477% median (+563% average). At 3 years: +614% median (+1,194% average). Average drawdown from entry was -8%, worst case -31%. Signal #6 just fired at $77,892 on September 1, 2026. Only 5 prior instances means the odds are directional, not statistical law. Still, a perfect hit rate across a decade of cycles is hard to ignore.
Bitcoin (Porkopolis Power Law, Q2)
Bitcoin has hit Q2 on the Porkopolis Power Law trend. Price has traded below this zone on only 2% of days in Bitcoin’s history.
Bitcoin (200-Week Moving Average Value Zone)
At $78,000, Bitcoin is exiting the bottom fifth quantile of its 200-week moving average. Frank frames this as value territory. It’s a question, not a forecast: what if the pain trade from here is higher?
Section Summary
Two technical signals with long, mostly clean histories, the weekly Supertrend and the monthly Ultimate Oscillator, fired in the same week. Both fired while Bitcoin sits in a zone that two separate valuation lenses call statistically cheap. The common thread across all four: strong historical precedent, no forward guarantee, and small sample sizes on the rarer signals.
2. Bitcoin: On-Chain and ETF Confirmation
Spot demand and holder behavior back up the technical signals
Bitcoin / IBIT (ETF Inflows Near Cost Basis)
Spot Bitcoin ETFs have posted a few straight weeks of positive inflows as they approach their roughly $84,000 aggregate cost basis. Frank flags this as a level worth watching. A cost basis this close to spot can turn reflexive in either direction.
Bitcoin (50-Week Moving Average, “Bears’ Last Stand”)
Bitcoin is holding just below its 50-week moving average, near $82,000. Checkonchain calls this level the Bears’ Last Stand. Checkmate’s latest piece looks at why price has paused here, and what prior bear-to-bull transitions suggest happens next.
Bitcoin (Short-Term Holder Cost Basis, 200DMA, True Market Mean Reclaim)
Bitcoin’s rally past $77,000 pushed price back above three on-chain levels at once: the Short-Term Holder cost basis, the 200-day moving average, and the True Market Mean. Checkonchain notes spot demand followed through on the initial short squeeze. That’s the detail separating a real demand shift from a short-covering bounce that fades.
Bitcoin (Long-Term Holder Supply in Profit)
The share of long-term holder supply sitting in profit is mean-reverting. At $79,000, that figure sits at 66%, against a typical baseline near 83%. The gap is a rough proxy for how much of the long-term holder base is still underwater at current prices.
Section Summary
On-chain data backs up the technical picture from Section 1. Spot ETF demand is accumulating near cost basis. Price has reclaimed three short-term levels at once. Long-term holders are, on average, less profitable than usual for this stage of a cycle. None of these four data points carries a forward-return statistic. They read as confirming context for Section 1, not standalone triggers.
3. Broader Market Context
Crypto and equities outside Bitcoin, for scale
Total Crypto Market Cap (200-Week EMA)
A chart of total crypto market cap against its 200-week EMA shows current levels near where the market traded during the COVID crash of 2020 and the FTX collapse of 2022, per el_crypto_prof.
S&P 500 (Breadth Extreme)
Mike Zaccardi flags that a recent session was the 3rd-worst breadth day of 2026, with more than 60% of S&P 500 constituents declining. That’s only the 3rd such session all year, the fewest year-to-date since 2010. And 2026 overall ranks among the strongest breadth environments of the past 20 years, per @bluekurtic.
Section Summary
Crypto’s broad market cap sits at a historically significant technical level while equity breadth posts a rare extreme in the other direction. Neither is a standalone trigger, but both set the stage for Section 4’s macro read.
4. Macro & Leading Indicators
Multiple leading indicators still point the same way. The open question: does altcoin market cap actually catch up to what they’ve historically preceded?
Altcoins / Bitcoin (ISM vs. Alts/BTC Setup)
Mr Ruhul argues the ISM Manufacturing Index is the missing piece behind why 2025 never got a real altseason. In 2017 and 2021, ISM turning higher preceded Alts outperforming Bitcoin by +1,800% and +550%. In 2025, ISM stayed below 50, and Alts underperformed Bitcoin by roughly -45%, with the monthly MACD on Alts/BTC staying red the whole time. ISM has since climbed back above 54. Alts/BTC has been consolidating for a long stretch. If ISM keeps improving and Alts/BTC breaks that consolidation, the setup looks more like 2017 or 2021 than 2025. This is an analog, not a backtested signal.
US PMI (% of Central Banks Cutting Rates, 11-Month Lead)
As of the latest data (14 September 2026), PMI sits at 54.6. The share of the ~38 tracked central banks in a cutting cycle has pulled back sharply, from a multi-year high near 95% to roughly 60%. On its own, that pace of pullback looks like the early stage of a shift into a hiking regime, not just a pause. That’s worth flagging, both because this indicator tracks PMI closely, and because a regime shift would cut against the more constructive read elsewhere in this section.
The correlation gets much stronger once you apply a lead. Near-zero with no lead (0.09–0.28 across every window tested). 0.61 since 1985 at an 11-month lead. 0.77–0.78 in the 2016- and 2020-onward windows at a 12-month lead.
Historically, entering a hiking regime starts as close to a coin flip. 38% positive at 3 months, only crossing 50/50 by 6 months. It gets more favorable from there: 75% positive at 12 months (+9.9% median S&P 500, +9.3% Nasdaq 100), 88% positive at 24 months (+19.5% S&P 500, +29.6% Nasdaq 100), across the eight hiking regimes lasting 6+ months since 1985. The exception is severe: the April 2000 hiking episode left the S&P 500 down -25.9% and the Nasdaq 100 down -66.2% by 24 months. This is a documented tendency, not a statistical proof.
This chart now runs live on the site instead of a monthly TradingView rebuild. See altcoinscreener.com/charts/pmi-vs-central-bank-cuts for the current reading.
US PMI (Global M2 YoY, 5-Month Lead)
Global M2 year-over-year growth leads PMI by roughly 5 months. It’s at 8.82% and climbing, alongside PMI’s own 54.6 reading. The 5-month offset has held a 0.93 correlation since 2020. That’s very strong. The same setup has preceded two of the largest altcoin market cap expansions on record, in 2016 and 2020. A third instance, dated from October 2022, has now run past its historical lag window. That’s worth weighing against where altcoin market cap actually sits today (see note below).
US PMI (US Citi Earnings Revisions Index, 2-Month Lead)
The US Citi Earnings Revisions Index is at 0.51, alongside PMI’s 54.6. The 2-month lead has held a 0.6–0.72 correlation across every window measured since 2008. That said, the optimal lead has stretched toward 9 months since 2022. That’s a possible regime shift worth monitoring, not acting on yet. Like the Global M2 relationship above, this indicator has historically preceded major altcoin market cap expansions, in 2016 and 2020. The current instance is still forming. There’s no completed historical analog to lean on yet.
S&P 500 / Bitcoin (Oil % Deviation From Trend)
Oil’s deviation from its long-term trend is a threshold signal. Crossing above 50% has historically meant a risk-off environment in equities over the following months. Oil is currently at $107.62, 34.5% above its long-run trend ($76.19). That’s elevated, and it looks like the kind of move that showed up earlier this year. But it’s not yet at a level worth flagging as a warning. Worth watching, not acting on yet.
Section Summary
Five leading indicators here, and they don’t all point the same way. The Global M2 and Citi Earnings Revisions charts both flag a “third instance,” similar to the setups that preceded the 2017 and 2021 altcoin expansions. But total altcoin market cap today, at roughly $1.04T, is still well below where it stood at the peak of the 2020-2021 instance. Either this cycle’s move is still building, or the relationship is behaving differently than before. The Central Bank Rate Cuts chart complicates the picture directly. Its most recent reading, a sharp pullback in the share of banks cutting, looks more like the early stage of a hiking regime than a continuation of easing. If that’s right, it’s a real tension with the risk-on framing from the other charts, not just a timing question. Oil’s deviation from trend, by contrast, is a live warning that hasn’t triggered. It’s elevated but still below the threshold that has historically marked risk-off conditions. Worth tracking, not assuming any of this resolves one way.
Closing Summary
Multiple independent signals, technical, on-chain, and macro, are lining up behind one case: Bitcoin looks closer to a value zone than a top. Two rare technical buy signals with strong historical hit rates. ETF and spot demand reclaiming key on-chain levels. Three separate leading-indicator relationships (ISM/Alts-BTC, PMI/Global M2, PMI/Citi Earnings Revisions) that have each historically preceded major altcoin market cap expansions.
The main risk is sample size on one side, timing on the other. Two of this week’s strongest Bitcoin technical signals have fired fewer than 10 times each in history. On the macro side, the current “third instance” of the PMI-correlation setups has already run past its historical lag window, without altcoin market cap catching up to where it stood after 2020-2021. That gap is the thing to watch. It either means this cycle’s move is still building, or that these relationships are behaving differently than before.
There’s also a fresh macro caution worth weighing directly. The share of central banks in a cutting cycle just pulled back sharply from a multi-year high. That could mark the start of a hiking regime, not just a pause, and a shift like that would cut against the liquidity backdrop the PMI-correlation charts are leaning on.
Read together, the setup looks more constructive than not. But it rests on levels holding and gaps closing, not on any single signal being infallible. The hiking-regime question is the one to watch for a reason to change that view.
Indicator Summary Table
| Instrument | Indicator Name | Insight (stats-first) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Altcoins / Bitcoin | ISM vs. Alts/BTC setup | ISM above 54 and rising; 2017 (+1,800%) and 2021 (+550%) analogs vs. 2025 (-45%, ISM below 50); no formal forward stats | Source Link |
| Bitcoin | 200-week MA value zone | Exiting bottom quintile of 200 WMA at $78k (no stats provided) | Source Link |
| Bitcoin | 50-week MA, “Bears’ Last Stand” | Holding just below ~$82k (no stats provided) | Source Link |
| Bitcoin | Long-term holder supply in profit | 66% in profit vs. ~83% typical baseline at $79k (no forward stats provided) | Source Link |
| Bitcoin | Monthly Ultimate Oscillator buy signal | 5th signal since 2015; 100% win rate 1-3Y; +89% median 1Y return; signal #6 fired at $77,892 | Source Link |
| Bitcoin | Porkopolis Power Law, Q2 | Only 2% of days have traded lower on this model (no further stats provided) | Source Link |
| Bitcoin | STH cost basis / 200DMA / True Market Mean reclaim | Price reclaimed all three levels past $77k; spot demand confirmed the squeeze (no stats provided) | Source Link |
| Bitcoin | Weekly Supertrend buy signal | 8 signals since 2010; 87.5% win rate; +109.99% median 12M return; worst case -65.61% | Source Link |
| Bitcoin / IBIT | ETF inflows near cost basis | Consecutive weeks of inflows approaching ~$84k aggregate cost basis (no stats provided) | Source Link |
| S&P 500 | Breadth extreme | 3rd-worst breadth day of 2026 (60%+ decliners); fewest such days YTD since 2010 | Source Link |
| S&P 500 / Bitcoin | Oil deviation from trend | Oil at $107.62, 34.5% above trend ($76.19); elevated but below the 50% risk-off threshold | Altcoin Screener (chart-only) |
| Total Crypto Market Cap | 200-week EMA | Near COVID 2020 / FTX 2022 levels (no stats provided) | Source Link |
| US PMI | % of Central Banks Cutting Rates, 11-month lead | 0.61 corr since 1985 (11mo lead), 0.77-0.78 since 2016/2020 (12mo lead); hiking regimes historically 75% positive S&P 500 at 12mo (+9.9% median), 88% at 24mo (+19.5% median); April 2000 exception -25.9% | Source Link |
| US PMI | Global M2 YoY, 5-month lead | 0.93 correlation since 2020; M2 at 8.82%, PMI at 54.6, both climbing | Altcoin Screener (chart-only) |
| US PMI | US Citi Earnings Revisions Index, 2-month lead | 0.6-0.72 correlation since 2008; Citi ER at 0.51, PMI at 54.6; lead has stretched to 9mo since 2022 | Altcoin Screener (chart-only) |
Large Caps
New and historical screener files are both at altcoinscreener.com/screener-archive.
The level to watch across this whole group is Bitcoin’s weekly 50-week moving average. Altcoins have tended to follow Bitcoin’s lead here, not move first. So a reclaim is the trigger I’m watching for the broader market to turn. Hype and Zcash are the two exceptions worth flagging up front. Both have already reclaimed their key moving averages and are showing strong outperformance against Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Update
Bitcoin is sitting right at the level that matters most for the broader market: the weekly 50-week moving average, at $78,725. Price closed the week at $77,745, just below it. A decisive reclaim here is the trigger I’m watching. Altcoins have tended to follow once Bitcoin clears this level, not lead it. The LeveLeledc exhaustion indicator just flashed a green (buy) signal on the weekly chart, the first one here since the 2022 bear-market low.
Ethereum Update
Ethereum, like Bitcoin, is still working on reclaiming its own key level: the weekly 50-week moving average, at $2,470. The weekly 200-week MA ($2,515) sits further overhead. My long-term trend read is still negative here. I want a clean weekly close above $2,470 before treating this as more than a test from below. No LeveLeledc signal has fired recently in either direction.
Solana Update
Solana remains below both its weekly 50-week ($105) and 200-week ($110) moving averages. My long-term trend read is still negative. No recent LeveLeledc signal here either. This is the large cap in the group with the least evidence of a bottom forming so far, despite the short-term trend turning up.
Sui Update
Sui is still well below its weekly 50-week moving average, which sits at $1.18 against a current price of $0.72. That’s a long way to close. That said, the LeveLeledc indicator just flagged a green (buy) signal on the weekly chart at current levels, the first one since mid-2024. Worth watching for a base here, even though the trend itself hasn’t turned yet.
Hype Update
Hype is one of two names in this group already doing what I want Bitcoin to do. Price is trading well above every moving average I track, including the weekly 50-week MA at $46.49. It’s also broken above the level that triggered its last LeveLeledc exhaustion signal back in May. No new signal has fired since. I read that as trend continuation, not exhaustion.
Zcash Update
Zcash is the standout of the group. Price has gone from below every moving average to more than 7x its weekly 200-week MA ($144) in a matter of months. Both trend reads on my model are positive. The catch: the LeveLeledc indicator just fired a red (sell/exhaustion) signal on the current weekly candle, right at this move’s high. That doesn’t mean the trend is over. But after a move this fast, I’d treat new size here with more caution than the raw trend strength suggests.
Dogecoin Update
Dogecoin is the weakest chart in this group. Price remains well below both the weekly 50-week ($0.110) and 200-week ($0.138) moving averages. Both trend reads on my model are still negative. One thing worth flagging: the LeveLeledc indicator just fired a green (buy) signal at current levels, the first one in this downtrend. That’s a reason to watch for a bounce, not yet a reason to call a bottom.
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