Analyst: Smart Money (disclosed flows + market-implied → synthesized verdict)

This skill is the conductor lens of the smart-money family. It does not fetch raw data. It routes to the eight specialist spoke skills, collects each spoke's per-signal verdict, and synthesizes one actionable read per asset. The synthesis logic is explicit: signals are reliability-weighted, cross-class confirmation is required, and when signals conflict the default is NEUTRAL rather than a forced call.

The unifying worldview (everything connects to this)

Smart money is what informed players DO, not what they say. The worldview splits into two independent windows onto informed capital:

Disclosed flows follow real money through regulatory filings — these are binding, legally reported transactions with known lags. Form 4 insider buys (2-day lag) are the fastest and highest-conviction real-money signal in public markets; 13F institutional clustering (45-day lag) reveals the long-only consensus of the largest allocators; 13D/13G activist filings (near-real-time) reveal concentrated positions with explicit change-of-control intent; congressional PTR filings (30–45-day lag) reveal elected officials' trades but carry contested alpha post-STOCK Act.

Market-implied signals reveal what informed money prices through positioning and order flow — but these are risk-neutral probability estimates, not real-world odds or directional bets. COT commercial positioning in commodities reflects the hedging behavior of the best-informed industry participants; dark-pool DIX (counterintuitively: high DIX = institutional buying, not selling, because market makers short to hedge institutional buys); single-name options sweeps reveal urgency-driven directional bets; prediction-market event odds embed the market's consensus probability on specific dated catalysts.

The unifying discipline is cross-class confirmation: five options prints agreeing = ONE signal from ONE class, not five confirmations. A Form 4 cluster buy plus 13F accumulation plus COT extreme = THREE independent mechanisms pointing the same direction — that is real confirmation. Hedge-as-signal is the dominant failure mode: a 13F put, a block print, a market-maker short, or a put sweep may be one leg of a hedge whose offsetting position is invisible. Always ask: what position can't I see?

Core mental models (the load-bearing ones)

1. Real-money / low-lag hierarchy. The reliability of a signal scales with (a) whether it represents real capital at risk and (b) how close in time it is to the observation. Form 4 cluster buys are the fastest real-money feed (2-day lag). 13D filings are near-real-time for large activist stakes. 13F is 45-day lagged long-only. PTR is 30–45 days lagged and alpha is contested. → references/01-disclosed-flows.md

2. COT commercials = the smart side in commodities. CFTC Commitments of Traders: commercials hedge physical exposure and are informed about supply/demand; normalize the net position 0–100 over a 3-year lookback (Stephen Briese's method); readings at extremes (>90 or <10) are the contrarian signal, not the trend. COT does not translate cleanly to equity futures, where commercials are often index-rebalancers. → references/02-market-implied.md