Schemas
The lenses through which we read the world.
A schema is an interpretive framework — a structured way of reading what the economy, the credit cycle, or a technology is doing right now. Numen weighs each schema against the signals that map to its stages and surfaces a current reading. This catalog is the public wiki — the same schemas a Palanor steward sees tuned to their own house.
Featured
Rolling Recession
A pattern where contraction moves through sectors in sequence — housing, goods, freight, labor, services — so the aggregate never prints a recession while individual sectors take their turn.
AI Margin Compression
A thesis schema — the cost of intelligence falling faster than the price of software puts software-sector margins under structural pressure.
Defense + national security schema
The defense-industrial cycle — from peace dividend through stabilization, elevation, surge, and wartime mobilization. Each phase has its own procurement posture, primes vs. new-entrant capture, and supply-chain shape.
Financial Instability Hypothesis
Stability breeds instability. Credit posture migrates from hedge finance to speculative to Ponzi — until the moment it cannot.
Industry
4
Sector arcs — defense, energy, real estate, SaaS. Each schema tracks where its industry sits across the cycle.
Defense + national security schema
The defense-industrial cycle — from peace dividend through stabilization, elevation, surge, and wartime mobilization. Each phase has its own procurement posture, primes vs. new-entrant capture, and supply-chain shape.
Palanor
Energy industry schema
The energy-cycle arc from investment expansion through capacity peak, oversupply, consolidation, and demand recovery. Reads the upstream/downstream tension across hydrocarbons + transition commodities.
Palanor
Real estate industry schema
The real-estate cycle — recovery, expansion, hypersupply, recession, reset. Tracks both residential affordability dynamics and commercial cap-rate compression/expansion.
Palanor
SaaS industry schema
The SaaS cycle through hypergrowth, multiple compression, path to profitability, margin discipline, and consolidation. Today's reading is shaped by AI margin compression and the closed-then-reopening capital window.
Palanor
Risk
3
Named threats — talent tightening, capital window closure, AI margin compression. Each schema is the shape of the risk.
AI Margin Compression
A thesis schema — the cost of intelligence falling faster than the price of software puts software-sector margins under structural pressure.
Palanor (Tim Woodring)
Denial0% · regressingCapital window closure schema
The capital-cycle gate — wide open, open, watchful, tightening, closed. The CFO + treasurer's read on whether the next refinance, raise, or deal closes on familiar terms.
Palanor
Talent cycle tightening schema
The labor-market arc — loose, balanced, tight, overheated, cooling. Reads the steward's exposure to wage-price pressure, retention crisis, and the layoff cycle.
Palanor
Cycle
9
Macro and financial cycles — the foundational reading frames that pre-date the formal family taxonomy.
Financial Instability Hypothesis
Stability breeds instability. Credit posture migrates from hedge finance to speculative to Ponzi — until the moment it cannot.
Hyman Minsky
Speculative finance22% · regressingHoward Marks Market Cycle
Markets oscillate between fear and greed in four observable stages. The investor edge is recognizing which stage you are in, not predicting the next one.
Howard Marks (Oaktree)
Despair0% · regressingHype Cycle
A five-stage path technologies travel from innovation trigger through inflated expectations, disillusionment, enlightenment, and productive plateau.
Popularized by Gartner
Trough of disillusionment44% · stableKondratiev Long Wave
A roughly 50–60 year cycle of capitalist economies — spring expansion, summer inflation, autumn credit boom, winter contraction — driven by waves of technological and infrastructural investment.
Nikolai Kondratiev
Spring — expansion0% · regressingMarathon Capital Cycle
A supply-side cycle: high returns attract capital, capital builds capacity, capacity destroys returns, returns shrink, capital leaves — and the cycle re-seeds.
Marathon Asset Management
Return spike0% · regressingRolling Recession
A pattern where contraction moves through sectors in sequence — housing, goods, freight, labor, services — so the aggregate never prints a recession while individual sectors take their turn.
Popularized by Liz Ann Sonders; refined by Torsten Sløk and contemporary macro analysts
Labor softening63% · stableShiller CAPE Regime
Long-horizon valuation framework — the cyclically-adjusted price-to-earnings ratio orders equity-market regimes from cheap to expensive, with implications for forward 10-year returns.
Robert Shiller
Cheap0% · regressingSoros Reflexivity
Markets do not merely reflect fundamentals — perception shapes the fundamentals themselves, producing self-reinforcing booms and self-reinforcing busts.
George Soros
Latent trend0% · regressingThe Big Cycle
Three interlocking cycles — long-term debt, internal order, external order — drive the rise and fall of empires and reserve currencies.
Ray Dalio
Decline40% · stable
Stewards see schemas tuned to their own house.
The public wiki shows the global read. A Palanor steward sees each schema scored against their organization's profile, with Numen commentary tuned to their role and disposition.