[Cryptocurrency’s downward spiral in the fourth quarter of 2025 reinforced a visceral understanding of the asset’s volatility and the difficulty of determining the rationale for the continued sell-off. Articles during this period were prevalent with head-scratching and grappling with the market dynamics behind the price collapse. All the while, retail and professional investors were being burned in crypto ETFs, which had reached over $150 billion in assets.
This crypto price downturn underlined the fact that we are all investing in an extreme state of uncertainty, and relying only on assumptions, extrapolations, and predictions in such an environment is a risk that needs to be actively managed. Suggestions for adding a price trend risk management system or overlay became a topic of discussion.
To explore this further, I reached out to Rocco Pellegrinelli, CEO and Founder of Trendrating – an advanced alpha discovery and trend analytics research platform that offers investment managers a risk and opportunity management overlay to any portfolio holdings, including crypto ETFs. He sent me a research flyer that illustrated how his AI-driven price trend model issued crypto ETF trend downgrades well before conventional research or traditional methodologies detected the shift. The research was first published on December 3, 2025, on FactSet and Bloomberg, which provided a strong validation of Trendrating’s capability to anticipate market shifts before they became apparent. This early warning mechanism is crucial in the crypto space, where volatility is high, and quick adjustments can make a significant difference in managing both risk and opportunity for investors. I asked him questions to better understand how his research platform was designed to validate and capture price trends on the growing number of crypto ETFs.]
Hortz: Can you explain your thinking behind building the Trendrating research platform?
Pellegrinelli: Our goal has always been to develop the investment research tools that professional investment managers need and deserve by offering broader market intelligence than what conventional data and tools provide. We fill this critical knowledge gap.
We firmly believe that professional managers’ investment strategies and models will profit from better information that is based on pragmatic fact-finding. This enables the discovery of factual insights that have a measurable impact on the quality of the investment decision process.
Our core belief is simple: understanding and respecting price trends is not optional – it is essential. Market research needs to reflect not only fundamentals but also sentiment, momentum, and patterns that often precede headline events.
Hortz: What does “respect for” and monitoring price trends provide investment managers?
Pellegrinelli: On the one hand, it provides an early warning system. It’s like being able to feel the slight vibration of a railroad track coming from a distant but fast-approaching train or being able to see beneath calm waters to discern the gathering undercurrents and rip tides that could potentially pull strong swimmers, or investors in our case, dangerously underwater.
Likewise, positive price trend indicators signal the building of favorable underlying momentum – reading the gathering trade activity as it is happening in real-time, from large institutional and other major players building positions.
This provides great support for managers in their buying and selling decisions.
Hortz: How is this applied to crypto ETFs?
Pellegrinelli: Instead of trying to figure out the big picture as to what is going on in the crypto industry or attempting to forecast Bitcoin’s price direction, the research platform focuses on reading the underlying trade activity of a crypto ETF to see what is actually happening on the ground, to determine what pressures are building that can affect the ETF price.
We remain cooly independent from the crypto story and prognostications about cryptocurrencies. We harbor no biases or desired outcomes on the underlying assets that we are monitoring. We focus on validating price trends as they are happening. This provides us with clarity and dedication to our singular efforts to provide a more targeted risk and opportunity management system for our professional investor clients.
Hortz: How is your Trendrating system different than other trend analysis tools?
Pellegrinelli: Unlike other trend rating systems, our advanced AI-driven trend analytics can isolate every trade to validate and capture price trends as they are happening, as opposed to others that may mathematically work off of day-end prices or other methods.
Conventional methodologies can have drawbacks that need to be managed. Momentum can be late, as it requires several months of price action before identifying a trend and therefore works primarily with long-lasting trends. Technical analysis indicators can help, but many of them can be inconsistent across different market cycles (ranging or trending) and volatility phases.
Trendrating offers an AI-driven, multi-factor model that decodes buying versus selling pressure, the driving force behind medium-term trends. Our advanced AI technology makes it easy to monitor over 17,000 stocks globally and receive timely alerts on any trend reversal.
That is why our research platform was able to issue a bear trend signal across crypto ETFs near their tops before most of the price drop damage was done. Their sharp drop illustrates how quickly market sentiment can turn and how fast huge losses are produced. That is why best-in-class research and methodology to detect price trend reversals in time should be part of any sound investment process.
Hortz: Any other thoughts you can share on how advisors, asset managers, and other professional investors can use this type of advanced price trend analysis research tool?
Pellegrinelli: We specifically designed our modern data research platform with AI technology (including an AI Assistant) and enhanced market intelligence capabilities that, in a few clicks, can be quickly added as a research and decision-making overlay to any investment manager’s current investment process, including management of crypto ETFs.
We currently invite and offer managers extended free trials to demonstrate and prove with facts how our advanced AI price trend analytics and alpha discovery research platform can provide enhanced market intelligence, strengthen risk management, and improve investment performance for any manager, using any investment methodology.
This article was originally published here and is republished on Wealthtender with permission.
About the Author
Bill Hortz
Founder Institute for Innovation Development
Bill Hortz is an independent business consultant and Founder/Dean of the Institute for Innovation Development- a financial services business innovation platform and network. With over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry including expertise in sales/marketing/branding of asset management firms, as well as, creatively restructuring and developing internal/external sales and strategic account departments for 5 major financial firms, including OppenheimerFunds, Neuberger&Berman and Templeton Funds Distributors. His wide ranging experiences have led Bill to a strong belief, passion and advocation for strategic thinking, innovation creation and strategic account management as the nexus of business skills needed to address a business environment challenged by an accelerating rate of change.
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