THE PULSE WEEKLY REPORT

Rolex market: the smoothed index crosses 100

Week of August 3–9, 2026 · The Pulse Rolex Index · thepulse.fun
The Pulse Index
99.73
+1.6% this week
Average watch
100.49
+0.5% this week
Typical sale price
$15,195
from $14,938
Sales pace
174/day
below 185 baseline
✨ The smoothed EWMA — the index’s long-run signal, which filters out thin-sample noise — closed the week at 100.10. That is the first close above 100 since the data series was revised in early August. The market’s underlying state is now above its May 20 launch baseline.

The week in one paragraph

The Pulse Index gained +1.6% to close at 99.73, with the more important smoothed EWMA crossing above 100 for the first time on the revised series. The week started weak — Monday’s raw price print (P = 97.6) was the softest of the week, likely reflecting thin Sunday confirmation data — then rallied sharply. Tuesday was the week’s strongest trading session: 220 confirmed sales and $3.73M in dollar flow, with W reaching 99.40. The market spent the rest of the week consolidating those gains, with Friday delivering another active session (214 confirmed, $3.86M) and the weekend fading to just 117 sales on Sunday. Breadth was constructive: 9 of 14 watches gained on the week. The dominant rotation was into Datejusts — both the Smooth and Fluted variants gained ~6.5–7% — while the Sea-Dweller and discontinued Submariner Date gave back ground.

Movers of the week

WatchWeekRead
Explorer II (226570)+21.4%⚠️ Thin-sample artefact: low Sunday/Monday volume means a few high-priced sales dominate the window. Directionally up; magnitude is noise. Evidence-weighted W moved only +1.6% for the whole basket.
Datejust 41 Fluted (126334)+6.8%Real breadth in the entry tier; clean sample all week. Volume king of the basket.
Datejust 41 Smooth (126300)+6.5%Mirrors the Fluted — both Datejusts moving together is a reliable signal of broad new-money demand.
Explorer 36 (124270)+5.0%Recovering after last week’s softer prints; cleaned of the prior contamination event (now clean at $9,484).
Daytona (116500LN)+3.5%Bounce after last week’s −7%; now back at $34,236. Grail demand holding.
Sea-Dweller (126600)−11.7%Low-sample reference (thin most weeks); pulled back sharply from last week’s pop. Range-bound at $12–14k.
Sub Date prev gen (116610LN)−5.5%Giving back two weeks of gains; now at $12,976. No obvious catalyst.
Submariner Hulk (116610LV)−3.9%Third consecutive week softer; still well above baseline at $20,868.

Watch to watch: Sub No-Date supply drying up

The Submariner No-Date (124060) posted only +0.2% on price this week — roughly flat. But the supply picture is more interesting: Cyclops’s inventory tracker shows the reference down 37 units (−6.0%) over six consecutive days, the steepest contraction in the tracked basket. Monday this week logged zero new listings for the 124060. Price and supply are currently decoupled: sellers aren’t pricing up yet, but the pool of available watches is shrinking. If the inventory trend holds for another week, price should follow.

Liquidity read

Confirmed sales averaged 174/day this week — below the 185 baseline but not dramatically so. The shape was uneven: Tuesday hit 220 sales ($3.73M), Friday delivered 214 sales ($3.86M), and Sunday faded to just 117 sales ($2.09M). The weekend effect is structural — new listings and removals both collapse on Saturday/Sunday. Stripping out the two weekend days, the weekday average runs closer to 191/day, modestly above baseline. Dollar flow averaged $3.03M/day for the week. The bid–ask spread (dealer buy prices vs Chrono24 ask) remains in the 29–31% range, consistent with recent weeks.

The EWMA crossing 100: what it means and what it doesn’t

The EWMA (exponentially weighted moving average with a 3-day half-life) filters out single-session noise and represents the market’s underlying price trend. Closing at 100.10 means the smoothed state of the basket is now marginally above where it was on May 20 — the day we started tracking. This is not a breakout: the 11-week range on the raw index has been 97.6 to 101.4, and 100.10 EWMA sits right in the middle of that range. What it does signal is that the August recovery from the data-revision lows (W dipped to 97.9 on Jul 6) has been steady and durable. The market is not breaking out; it is holding.

Data notes this week: All seven days had clean coverage across the full 14-reference basket with 80–99% price completeness. Monday August 3 showed a soft raw-P print (97.6) driven by thin Sunday-confirmation data; the EWMA (98.9 that day) is the more reliable read. The Explorer II’s +21% figure reflects a weekend window with very few confirmed sales (117 on Sunday); the evidence-weighted headline index damped this to a +1.6% weekly move. The data series was revised in early August when roughly half of previously-counted historical removals were reversed after being rediscovered — this shifted the index level ~2–3 points lower across the board. The May 20 baseline (= 100) is on that revised series. Informational only, not investment advice. © The Pulse · thepulse.fun