High rates kill the long tail. AI is the only thing breaking out into it.
Fed funds at 5.33%, VC volume down 22% YoY. In every category sensitive to that environment — consumer social, web3, e-commerce — the signal trails are bending into the death corridor. The only categories rising against the macro are AI Dev Tools and Vertical AI. That is the trade.
Each rate-hike cycle has been followed by a death cluster. Current cycle: 5.33% rate plateau is still propagating through the category index — Q3 deaths up +68% YoY.
+ bars rose against a hostile macro. − bars fell with the macro — those are the trades to short.Showing illustrative values — live signal trail too sparse to compute divergence.
Top products ranked by week-over-week velocity.
No velocity data — scores compute nightly.
Lowest current avg signal score, ordered by proximity to the floor.Showing illustrative values — signal trail data too sparse.
| Category | Sig | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Crypto / Web3 | 8.4 | ↓ falling |
| Consumer Social | 19.1 | ↓ falling |
| No-Code | 22.5 | ↓ falling |
| E-Commerce | 24.8 | ↓ falling |
| Fintech Infra | 28.2 | → flat |
| Security | 30.7 | → flat |
| DevOps | 33.1 | → flat |
| Gaming | 35.0 | → flat |