Personal research · Singapore
Hobby project — not for sale

Risk doesn't arrive.
It builds —
quietly, then all at once.

BK/IQ is a public notebook on cross-asset fragility: a systematic read on where structural stress is accumulating across markets, before it shows up as realised loss — written in spare evenings by one risk practitioner, for the discipline of writing it down.

This is a hobby project — not a product, not a service, not investment advice. Nothing here is for sale or intended to influence investment decisions.

~100 instruments· 6 asset classes· Updated weekdays, 07:00 SGT
The Fragility Score

One score.
Three bands.

Six pillars — drawdown, CVaR, volatility, trend, correlation, vol-of-vol — condensed into a single 0–100 fragility read.

Moderate
Stressed
Crisis
0 55 70 100

Moderate · <55

Baseline structural risk. No unusual buildup detected across the pillar composite.

Stressed · 55–69

Fragility elevated across multiple pillars at once. Worth watching, not yet a crisis read.

Crisis · ≥70

Broad-based structural stress — historically the band associated with sharp drawdowns.

Illustrative classification thresholds, not today's reading — the score moves daily and is never shown as a forecast. This bands the Fragility Score specifically; the separate Regime read (below) runs its own three-model vote on volatility and drawdown. Read today's actual score in the notes →

Live — AI Markets basket
Read the AI Pulse notes →
Breadth > 50dma
Avg. ann. vol, 21d
Median P/E, ttm
Avg. pairwise correlation
As of · 19-instrument AI Markets basket, pulled live from the notebook's own data feed
BK
Written by Bhavesh Kamdar, FRM CQF — 25 years in risk and quantitative finance. BK/IQ reflects personal research and opinions only. These notes do not represent the views of any current or former employer, nor are they affiliated with any institution.
Singapore LinkedIn →
The Framework

The framework
for observing markets.

01
Fragility

A six-pillar composite that surfaces structural vulnerability across a universe of instruments — before it shows up in realised loss. Decomposable into its drivers. Updated daily.

Drawdown · CVaR · Contagion
Volatility · Trend · Vol Stress
02
Regime

A three-model ensemble on world (ACWI) volatility and drawdown — a deterministic state machine, a walk-forward Hidden Markov Model, and a Gaussian Mixture cross-check — voting Moderate, Stressed or Crisis by union-of-risk consensus. The HMM's posteriors are built to flag transition risk before the headline call moves.

State Machine · HMM · GMM
Consensus · Transition Risk
03
Fear & Greed

BK/IQ's own build on the well-known fear/greed framework — seven 0–100 signals (momentum, breadth, strength, credit and safe-haven demand) scored across the full ~100-instrument universe rather than the S&P 500 alone. Where options-flow data isn't freely available, VIX term structure stands in as the volatility-panic signal.

Momentum · Breadth · Strength
Credit · Safe Haven · Vol Term
04
Cross-Asset Signals

Observational signals synthesised from fragility, regime fit, momentum and cross-asset sentiment. Descriptive only. No position recommendations, no buy/sell calls.

Four-tier framework
Descriptive · Decomposable
05
AI Markets

Investor interest in AI-exposed markets has been intense enough this year to warrant its own dedicated read: a 19-instrument basket across the value chain — compute, silicon, hyperscalers, power, credit — grouped by layer rather than by ETF, refreshed daily.

On Method

Why these notes are
written in the open.

01Writing forces rigour.

Private spreadsheets tolerate shortcuts. Public notes don't. Making the framework visible is a personal discipline: every decomposition, weight, and threshold is exposed to scrutiny — first to my own, eventually to anyone who reads along.

02Rule-based, not discretionary.

The headline regime call is the output of a stated rule applied to public data. Nothing on the primary call is hand-tuned or discretionary. If a score changes, you can trace it to the input. That's what makes it a research project and not a market opinion blog.

03Learning in public.

The frameworks are works in progress. Some pillars will likely be reweighted. Some instruments may be dropped. When that happens, the change and its rationale will be logged publicly. Consistency matters less than transparency about revision.

04No edge claim.

Nothing here represents a trading edge, a strategy, or a recommendation. Backtests, where shown, are pedagogical — toy models to illustrate method, not performance claims. Treat everything as observation, not prescription.

Plain disclosure

What this is,
and what it is not.

BK/IQ is a hobby project — built and maintained in spare evenings, at no cost to readers, with no clients, no fund, and no business behind it. Below is the plain version of what that does and doesn't mean.

This is

A personal research project. Notes written publicly for the author's own discipline and curiosity. Published without expectation of readership, commercial return, or ongoing commitment.

This is not

A product, a service, a subscription, a newsletter, or a business. Nothing on this site is for sale, and nothing will ever be offered for sale without that being made visible and without appropriate regulatory permissions being obtained first.

Not investment advice

Nothing published here constitutes investment advice, a recommendation, a solicitation, or an offer. The author is not registered to provide investment advice to the public. Readers should consult appropriately licensed professionals for financial decisions.

No employer affiliation

BK/IQ is a personal project. The views expressed are the author's own and do not represent the views, policies, or research of any current or former employer. No employer has reviewed, endorsed, or is associated with the content on this site.

No data from privileged sources

All data used on this site is obtained from public sources (primarily Yahoo Finance via yfinance). No proprietary, confidential, or material non-public information from any employer or client is used in any way.

Contact

General correspondence: bhavesh113@gmail.com. The author does not accept client engagements, paid consulting, or commercial enquiries in connection with this site.