Six timeframes split three against three produces a reading of three, not six.

The arithmetic

Two counts go in, the larger one comes out.

Each side is tallied separately — how many timeframes are classified impulse up, how many impulse down — and the impulse convergence figure is whichever of those two is larger. The corrective figure works the same way on its own pair. Nothing sums across the divide, and nothing subtracts either. The reading is a statement about the strongest single bloc of agreement present, which is a narrower and more useful claim than any total could make.

The configuration this protects against

A fully engaged, evenly divided market is the trap.

Consider six enabled timeframes with three in impulse up and three in impulse down. Every row is confidently classified, nothing is neutral, and the chart is unmistakably active. A total would report six — the highest possible reading, produced by the market's clearest disagreement. The maximum reports three, which is what the strongest bloc actually amounts to. The trap is real because that configuration feels like conviction on the screen: colour everywhere, nothing hesitant, structure resolving fast. It is the state where the tool most needs to disagree with the impression the chart is making.

Why not net them

Subtracting the sides would hide how much is at stake.

The other obvious rule is to net the counts — three up minus three down is zero, five up minus one down is four. Netting also handles the divided book correctly, but it discards something the maximum keeps. Five against one and three against nothing both net to a similar place, while the maximum distinguishes them: one is a strong bloc facing active opposition, the other is a strong bloc facing silence. Those call for different postures, and the netting rule throws the distinction away. The maximum keeps the size of the dominant side visible and leaves the opposition for the operator to read off the rows.

The threshold inherits this

A minimum set against a maximum is a statement about consensus.

Because the figure is a bloc size, a threshold is a requirement that some number of timeframes actually agree — not that some number of timeframes have an opinion. This is what makes the threshold portable across different sets of enabled timeframes, and it is why the higher special threshold means something stronger rather than merely something rarer. Both thresholds are tests of the same quantity at different strictness, and the quantity is consensus. Setting the same numbers on the HUD and the overlay keeps the two surfaces testing the identical thing, which is the whole point of keeping them synchronised.

Reading it at the chart

The number tells you the bloc; the rows tell you what it is up against.

Practically this means the total is never the complete read. A convergence figure of four is a different situation depending on whether the remaining rows are neutral, corrective on the same side, or impulsive against it — and the figure is identical in all three. The disciplined habit is to read the number first as a gate, then scan the rows for what the number could not carry. That takes seconds and it is the difference between a threshold that filters and a threshold that gets treated as a verdict.

• Four with two neutral rows and four with two opposing rows are not the same setup.
• Opposition on faster rows during a higher-timeframe impulse is often just the pullback.
• Opposition on slower rows while faster rows drive is the configuration to stand down on.

The key idea

Aggregation rules are arguments, and this one argues that only agreement counts.

Choosing between a sum, a net and a maximum looks like a technical decision and is actually a claim about what the instrument is for. The maximum encodes a position: activity is not evidence, opposition does not cancel into confidence, and the only thing worth reporting is how many independent observations point the same way. That position runs through the wider system as well, in the modules that refuse to average ratios and the panels that report composites rather than blended scores. The arithmetic is where doctrine stops being a sentence and starts being enforceable.