S&P 500 Companies Expanding (Company Posture, % of companies)

## What this measures

The share of S&P 500 companies whose Posture reads **Expanding** on the last day of each month. Posture's Expanding ↔ Retrenching axis reads, for each company, its capital spending against a year earlier, debt raised against revenue, buybacks against capital spending, H-1B and PERM hiring filings, completed deals and Form D raises, and patent publications. Each is placed against the company's own last three years and against its sector, and a company reads Expanding at a score of 60 or more (with a 5-point margin before it changes stage).

## Why it matters

It counts what companies are doing with money and people, from filings, rather than what they say or what their shares do. A rising share means more of the index is building; a falling one means more are holding back. Its companion, posture.sp500.retrenching_share, counts the other end.

## How to read it

Because every company is placed partly against its own past, a typical month has roughly one company in five at each end, and the series moves when many companies change course at once. Read it with the retrenching share: both rising means companies are splitting. Companies whose evidence is too thin on a date (less than 60% of the axis readable) are left out of that month, and a month is published only when at least 70% of members have a reading.

## What it does not say

It is not a forecast, a rating or a view on share prices, and it uses no prices. Item 2.01 filings count acquisitions and dispositions alike. Before 26 September 2026 the S&P 500 membership Palanor stores is the current list carried back, so earlier months leave out companies that have since left the index.

## How it's built

Every input is used only from the day it became public (the 10-Q or 10-K that first reported a cash-flow figure; 8-K acceptance time; DOL hiring data 120 days after the decision quarter; patent publication). Month-end readings are stored once and never rewritten. The axis passed a back-test registered before any result was computed; the method and the test are on palanor.com/methodology/posture.

## Source

SEC EDGAR (XBRL cash-flow facts, Forms 8-K and D), U.S. Department of Labor OFLC H-1B and PERM disclosure data, USPTO patent publications. Palanor calculation (Posture, method posture-v1). Refreshed by /api/cron/company-posture.