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Market Intelligence: A Map to Market Signals

Feb 17, 2026

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A structured way to understand what markets are signaling — beyond the headlines

Use this page as a map. It helps you navigate Signals Desk by theme, connect related posts over time, and jump to the right framework depending on what you're seeing in the market.

Every day, markets generate noise: headlines, price moves, analyst notes, earnings releases.
Most of it answers what happened.

Market Intelligence focuses on something different:
what those events signal, why they matter, and how they can be tracked consistently over time.

This page is the starting point for that approach.

How Market Intelligence Fits with the Content You Already Read at FMP

On the FMP website, market content generally falls into three layers:

Market News → What happened today

Blog / Education → How data, tools, or APIs work
Market Intelligence → What the data signals, how expectations are shifting, and what's worth monitoring over time

If you already read our Signals Desk weekly articles, you're already engaging with Market Intelligence.

Market Intelligence lays out the ideas used to interpret signals; Signals Desk shows how those same signals show up in the market each week.

This reference page simply brings structure to that work — helping new readers understand it more quickly, and allowing regular readers to use it more deliberately as part of their ongoing market process.

What Market Intelligence Is (and Isn't)

Market Intelligence is not:

Stock picks or buy/sell calls
Trade recommendations
Breaking news
One-off opinions

It focuses on observable market behavior, such as:

Where expectations are shifting
Where companies are executing consistently
Where capital decisions signal confidence or pressure
Where price is moving ahead of consensus

The goal isn't prediction.
It's context — and a repeatable way to stay oriented as markets evolve.

Signals Desk: Market Intelligence in Action

Signals Desk is our weekly Market Intelligence series.

Each Signals Desk article:

Highlights a specific market signal
Explains what it may indicate — and what it doesn't
Shows how that signal can be tracked using data, not just headlines

Think of Signals Desk as the applied layer: real companies, real data, real-time examples.

How Signals Desk Is Structured

Signals Desk doesn't introduce a new idea every week.
It intentionally revisits a defined set of recurring signal types — such as valuation gaps, earnings execution, capital allocation, and market context — so readers can recognize patterns as they develop over time.

Each weekly article applies one or more of these signal categories to current market data, helping signals feel familiar rather than one-off.

The Core Market Intelligence Frameworks

Market Intelligence is built around four core frameworks. They don't change week to week — they're stable ways of interpreting markets. What does change is how they show up in live data.

Each Signals Desk article applies one or more of these lenses to current market conditions.

Valuation & Expectation Gaps

Markets price expectations, not facts.

This framework focuses on situations where market prices, valuation models, and analyst expectations stop lining up. These gaps often persist longer than expected — and tend to matter most when assumptions start getting revised.

This framework is useful when you want to understand:

Where price has moved faster than consensus thinking
Where valuation models imply outcomes very different from what the market is pricing
Where expectations may be resetting quietly, before headlines catch up

Signals Desk examples using this lens:

Valuation disconnects driven by DCF and fair value gaps
Price moving meaningfully away from consensus targets

Latest Signals Desk coverage:

These links highlight the latest Signals Desk examples, so you can see how this type of signal is playing out in real companies right now.

👉 Read the full Valuation & Expectation Gaps framework: A deeper explanation of how to use these signals in context and what to be careful about when interpreting them.

Earnings, Execution & Business Momentum

One good quarter can be noise. Repeated execution usually isn't.

This framework focuses on how consistently companies deliver — especially across different market conditions. It separates short-term surprises from durable operating behavior.

This framework helps answer:

Which companies keep beating expectations, and which don't
Whether growth is holding up across cycles or fading after a brief acceleration
Where operating leverage is improving beneath the surface

Signals Desk examples using this lens:

Earnings beat streaks that point to execution discipline
Multi-year revenue and EBITDA growth that signal durability, not hype

Latest Signals Desk coverage:

👉 Read the full Earnings, Execution & Business Momentum framework: A deeper explanation of how to use these signals in context and what to be careful about when interpreting them.

Capital Allocation & Income Signals

How companies use cash often matters more than what they say.

This framework looks at capital return decisions as behavioral signals — especially dividends, payout changes, and income posture. These decisions tend to reflect management's confidence in cash flow durability and balance sheet flexibility.

This framework is most useful when evaluating:

Dividend increases versus headline yield
Whether income is supported by cash flow, not just optics
When capital return decisions signal confidence — or emerging stress

Signals Desk examples using this lens:

Dividend hikes that reset payout baselines
High-yield situations where sustainability matters more than yield

Latest Signals Desk coverage:

Weekly Signals Desk | 5 Dividend Moves Flagged by the FMP API (Feb 9-13)

👉 Read the full Capital Allocation & Income Signals framework: A deeper explanation of how to use these signals in context and what to be careful about when interpreting them.

Market Context & Risk Framing

No signal exists in isolation. Context determines whether it holds.

This framework adds the macro and risk lens that prevents signals from being misread. It explains why the same signal can mean different things depending on rates, inflation, or broader market regimes.

This framework helps you understand:

How interest rates change valuation sensitivity
When inflation, FX, or commodity exposure distort company-level signals
Why some signals weaken or fail during regime shifts

Signals Desk examples using this lens:

Signals framed within changing macro conditions
Execution or growth signals interpreted through broader risk environments

Latest Signals Desk coverage:

Signals Desk Weekly | Multi-Year CAGR Strength Taking Shape Across Five Names (Feb 9-13)

👉 Read the full Market Context & Risk Framing framework: A deeper explanation of how to use these signals in context and what to be careful about when interpreting them.

How This Is Meant to Be Used

There's no single “correct” reading order — you can move between market news, Signals Desk, and these frameworks in whatever way is most useful at the moment.

Some readers will:

Start with market news
Use Signals Desk to understand why something matters
Come back here when they want a broader framework or context

Others will:

Follow Signals Desk each week
Use these frameworks to stay oriented as conditions change
Refer back to this starting point to connect related signals over time

Either way, Market Intelligence is meant to support your process, not add noise.
It's designed to compound over time — not overwhelm you in the moment.

Looking Ahead

Markets change. The way signals behave changes with them.

These frameworks are here to help you recognize familiar patterns as conditions evolve — whether expectations are shifting, execution is holding up, or risk is being repriced. When something in the market feels different, this map gives you a place to step back and interpret it more clearly.