Gate Pressure and Compression · The Three Reads

Where the account lived, not where it ended.

Compression scale

0.00–1.00

Pressure scale

0–100

Reads combined

How MARS uses this

Six structural inputs are scored monthly into a composite, and the composite maps onto the regime ladder. MARS reads results in context: the same numbers mean different things earned in Expansion tailwind versus survived through Instability, and posture is adjusted to the regime rather than to the last trade.

How it benefits you

You know whether the environment is friendly or hostile to your system before deciding what recent results mean. Confidence stops being borrowed from lucky months, defensive posture arrives before damage instead of after it, and monthly review gains a one-glance structural summary.

Twelve months classified across the regime ladder - the system's own weather record, from Expansion down toward Drawdown Control.

Where the account lived

Ending in Recovery after a month spent in Floor is not a Recovery month.

Average gate rank is computed across the month's daily gate positions, so it describes the structural climate rather than the closing state. The pair is what carries the information: a month that ends in Recovery while its average sits deep in Floor territory spent most of its time under far tighter authority than the closing label suggests, and any review reading only the end-of-month gate will misjudge how constrained the month actually was.

How pressure is built

Drawdown, spikes, and compression, weighted and capped.

The monthly pressure score is a composite rather than a single observation. Average drawdown carries the heaviest weight, maximum drawdown the next, the ratio of drawdown spike days to trading days the next, and residual compression the remainder, with the whole capped at one hundred. Building it this way means a month with one violent day and a month of continuous grinding pressure can arrive at similar scores by different routes, which is why the components stay visible rather than being folded away.

Average drawdown and maximum drawdown together dominate the score.
Spike days are read as a share of trading days, so short months are not flattered.
The compression term contributes the remainder, capped so no single input can run the score away.

The composite read

Any one of the three can be innocent. Together they convict.

Long dwell in the lower gates can be prudence. Fast transitions between gates can be ordinary volatility. Deep squeeze can be one bad cluster. The diagnostic earns its keep when the three move together, because extended dwell plus rising transition velocity plus deepening squeeze is a specific signature that no single component displays. Rapid oscillation between Growth and Recovery is the version of this that hides best: average depth looks acceptable, and the system is operating at the edge of a band.

The stealth finding

Chronic mild compression has no bad week in it.

Nothing about a persistently capped month announces itself. There is no alarming reading, no breach, and no incident to review. There is only authority quietly held below capacity for months at a time, and compounding quietly running below what the gate would have permitted. This is why compression is tracked as its own metric with its own ladder rather than being inferred from drawdown: the drawdown never gets bad enough to notice.

Reference

The compression score ladder

Score	Band	What the month felt like structurally
0.96 to 1.00	Expansion integrity preserved	Almost no meaningful compression; structural freedom fully intact
0.88 to 0.95	Very light compression	Minimal drag; small contractions that did not impair posture
0.79 to 0.87	Light managed compression	Some slowdown, but comfortably above defensive zones
0.67 to 0.78	Moderate compression	Persistent enough to matter; the month required caution
0.50 to 0.66	Meaningful structural constraint	Survivability posture began competing with growth posture
0.33 to 0.49	High compression regime	Strong structural throttling active for much of the month
0.00 to 0.32	Extreme compression, lock proximity	Severely impaired capital state; survivability first

Edge cases & failure modes

Where it can mislead

!Average gate rank and end-of-month gate answer different questions, and neither substitutes for the other.
!The compression metric's direction must be confirmed before live reliance, since it can be coded as pressure or as preserved freedom.

Doctrine

Connected inside MARS

This module doesn't work alone.

Connected — 01

Gate Pressure & Compression (full page)

Open system page →

Go deeper

Operator briefs on this territory.

Deep dive — 01

Dwell, velocity, squeeze: how long, how often, how hard.

How long it stayed, how often it moved, how hard it was squeezed. Three questions, three answers, no substitutes.

Read the full brief →

Deep dive — 02

Nothing in the gate ladder fires for duration — which is why dwell is measured.

Every gate threshold is a depth threshold. The shallow grind that lasts a quarter trips none of them.

Read the full brief →

Deep dive — 03

Pressure score: how heavy the month actually was, weighted four ways.

Average DD 40%, max DD 30%, spikes 20%, compression 10% — the month's load, scored to 100.

Read the full brief →

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