Regime shifts feel dramatic only in hindsight.
In real time, they feel… consistent.
By the time overlap opened between London and New York City, the new directional bias no longer surprised anyone.
Pullbacks were shallow.
Rallies faded earlier.
Volatility no longer spiked on decline—it flowed with it.
The system had settled into its new basin.
Maya expanded the energy surface model beyond local curvature.
"It's not enough to know the sign," she said.
"We need to measure the depth."
She projected the stability wells side by side.
When b > 0, two symmetric valleys form.
The deeper the valley, the stronger the local stability.
The ridge between them defines transition cost.
The market had migrated from the central ridge into one outer well.
The question was: how deep?
In Chicago, options positioning recalibrated entirely around the new range.
In Frankfurt, credit desks began quoting baseline spreads 15% wider than two weeks ago—without labeling them stressed.
In Singapore, cross-asset correlations re-anchored at higher negative beta.
The architecture did not resist the regime.
It internalized it.
Keith reviewed reversal probabilities.
"Mean reversion metrics are weakening," he said.
Because the mean itself had moved.
In dynamical systems, stability depends on the curvature at the equilibrium point:
Effective stiffness determines resistance to deviation.
The new basin showed stronger curvature than the prior center.
Meaning displacement within this regime self-corrected faster than attempts to escape it.
Jasmine highlighted something subtle.
Liquidity returned—but selectively.
Depth was stronger in the direction of continuation than in reversal.
That asymmetry revealed basin geometry.
It was easier to travel deeper than to climb out.
Mid-session in Tokyo, a short-covering wave attempted to retrace the move.
It climbed.
Briefly.
Then stalled at the prior ridge level.
Not violently rejected.
Just absorbed.
Energy insufficient to crest.
The ridge remained intact.
Maya adjusted the model again.
"Transition probability now depends on barrier height."
She displayed the conceptual escape condition:
Unless sufficient energy accumulates, the system remains in its current well.
And energy was no longer accumulating.
It was dissipating inside the basin.
In Hong Kong, volatility curves normalized around the new distribution.
In Zurich, private capital allocations rebalanced toward defensive positioning without urgency.
Adaptation was nearly complete.
Keith summarized it precisely.
"We've traded instability for entrenchment."
Maya nodded.
"The system prefers depth to oscillation."
Regime shifts stabilize once participants anchor expectations to the new curvature.
The more they adapt, the deeper the basin becomes.
Path dependence forms.
Late in the session, a minor macro surprise from Washington, D.C. attempted to push price toward the ridge again.
The move was orderly.
Contained.
Absorbed.
No breach.
Chapter 184 closes with quiet clarity:
The system is no longer balancing between possibilities.
It has committed to one.
The new basin is deep enough to sustain itself.
Stability has returned—
But in a different location.
And while oscillation risk has diminished,
The cost of reversal has increased.
To leave this regime now would require not drift—
Not gradient—
But shock sufficient to overcome barrier height.
Until then,
The valley holds.
And within it,
A different equilibrium writes the rules.