One ratio. Every cycle.
NQV — Nasdaq Q-Ratio Velocity — reads the market through a single instrument, the TQQQ/QQQ price ratio, distilled into one proprietary momentum line. It shows whether leveraged capital is leading the market or abandoning it, from the monthly chart down to the 5-minute pulse.
Why the TQQQ / QQQ ratio
Two funds on the same index. Their ratio is a built-in lie detector.
QQQ
the benchmarkQQQ (Invesco QQQ Trust) tracks the Nasdaq 100 — the 100 largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq: Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon and the rest of big tech. Highly liquid, listed since 1999, it's the cleanest mirror of where growth capital is flowing. In NQV, QQQ is the market itself.
TQQQ
leveraged moneyTQQQ (ProShares UltraPro QQQ) is a 3x leveraged QQQ, rebalanced daily. That daily rebalancing creates two behaviors:
- In a trend — daily compounding works for it; TQQQ's cumulative gain exceeds 3× QQQ.
- In chop — volatility decay grinds it down; even when QQQ goes sideways, TQQQ slowly bleeds.
TQQQ is the most aggressive, most honest money in the market.
Both funds track the same index, so dividing one by the other cancels everything specific to a stock or sector. What's left is pure signal: the ratio moves only as market momentum strengthens or weakens — the noise of differing underlyings is stripped away. That's what makes it a clean gauge. Ratio rising — leveraged money is beating the index; the trend has real momentum behind it. Ratio falling — leveraged money is lagging; momentum is fading even if the index is still climbing.
A rally the ratio refuses to confirm is powered by sentiment, not momentum. A decline where the ratio stabilizes before price often marks a bottom forming. The instrument is set: every NQV calculation is built on the TQQQ/QQQ closing-price ratio.
One reading, not two indicators
NQV fuses regime and rotation into a single momentum line.
NQV distills the ratio into one line. A slow component defines the regime — is momentum positive or negative? A fast component times the turns inside that regime, flagging when momentum is overextended or diverging from price. A channel length of 50 gauges how far the ratio has stretched from its baseline; an average length of 100 smooths the swing. The two are combined into a single reading — the line you watch, with local tops marked in red and bottoms in green.
NQV
the reading- Instrument
- TQQQ / QQQ
- Channel length
- 50
- Average length
- 100
- Output
- one line
- Markers
- pivot high / low
Built on MACD and a few other momentum indicators, tuned and combined into the proprietary NQV line.
Bull
NQV above zero and rising. Leverage is outrunning the index.
Neutral
NQV near zero and flat. Regime undecided.
Bear
NQV below zero and falling. Leverage decays faster than price.
Large frames rule. Small frames warn.
No single timeframe is the system. The large frames set direction and the small ones follow — but the small frames' persistent, one-way shifts feed back up the ladder and are what eventually turn the large cycle. Direction flows down; reversals are born flowing up.
The large frames set direction; the small ones follow. When the weekly and daily are BULL, a bearish reading on a small frame is a pullback within the trend, not a reversal — until the large cycle itself turns, trade in its direction.
But the small frames aren't only followers. A sustained, one-way lean in the small frames feeds back up the ladder and is what eventually reverses the large cycle. A single small-frame reading is noise; a persistent one is the early edge of a turn:
- 45-Min diverges first — price makes a new high, NQV refuses to confirm.
- The divergence isn't absorbed — 30-Min and 3-Hour turn.
- Small frames keep leaning the same way; the accumulated force erodes the layers above.
- The Daily line rolls over, toward the zero level.
- Finally the 3-Day and Weekly flip — the regime officially changes hands.
The full ladder — heaviest to lightest
Read the line, not the price
Price only tells you what already happened. Read NQV itself, in three passes — position, shape, structure.
First, before price: where is NQV versus its own history — high or low? And which side of zero — above (bullish regime) or below (bearish)? Level and sign come before everything else.
Is the line rising, rolling over, or just hovering? A flat, choppy stretch — the market hesitating, undecided — is not a signal. It's a wait: momentum is neither building nor breaking.
The turns that matter are double and triple bottoms — and tops. A second or third test where the line stops falling and turns up, even as price makes a new low, is where reversals are born. The first test is only a warning.
Signals
Bull
- NQV crosses up through zero, or turns up out of a low.
- The line steepens as it rises — momentum building.
Leveraged capital retakes the lead; trend momentum is confirmed.
Bear
- NQV crosses down through zero, or turns down from a high.
- Or it diverges — price makes a new high, NQV a lower high.
Leveraged capital decays faster than the index; momentum breaks down.
Neutral
- NQV hovers near zero, flat, flipping sign.
- Usually a transition between signals.
Wait for the large cycle to declare itself — don't predict.
Three quality checks
Steepening = momentum accelerating. Flattening = momentum exhausting — caution begins before the turn.
Weekly and daily aligned = highest confidence. When they conflict, defer to the large cycle and treat the small one as a warning.
Any new price high or low that NQV does not confirm should be discounted.
NQV is momentum-based and slightly lagging — by the time it turns, price has usually already moved. It never tries to call tops or bottoms; it aims to capture the middle of the trend — giving up the hardest first and last legs in exchange for the longest, steadiest middle. Backtested across 2013–2025, through the 2018 correction, the 2020 crash, and the 2022 bear market, the read still holds. It doesn't guess. It follows.
The VESTFY lines, live
Not a screenshot — the actual indicator, computed in your browser from live TQQQ/QQQ prices, on the 1-hour, daily or weekly. Three lines: CI (combined WaveTrend + MACD),MA (its moving average), and SD (the smoothed difference — the core decision line around zero).
Everything on this page is for educational purposes only. NQV is an analytical framework for studying market cycles — not a trading system VESTFY operates, and not a signal service; VESTFY does not issue trading signals or manage money, and nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Every reading is a probability judgment that can be wrong. Backtested performance does not guarantee future results. Always do your own research and consult a licensed professional before investing.