Where the US macro cycle stands
Thirteen public US data series, read the same way every day, reduced to one number.
Current reading
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Stagflation risk flagged
Oil is under stress while growth momentum is deteriorating. That pairing is tracked separately from the composite because it behaves differently: it is the one configuration in which a weakening economy does not bring falling prices with it.
What this does and does not say
The reading describes conditions. It is deliberately silent on what anyone should do about them, and a band change is not a signal to buy or sell anything.
This dashboard
What economic conditions look like today, measured the same way every day. It describes the backdrop and stops there. Free, open, and updated every evening.
The quarterly notes and monthly all-clear
Vestaris runs four model ETF portfolios, with a positioning note each quarter and a short monthly email confirming whether anything has changed. That is where conditions become allocation decisions, and it moves far less often than the reading above.
Growth, credit and liquidity signals are negative together rather than one at a time. This is the configuration in which the inputs agree most strongly and most unhelpfully.
Growth signals are deteriorating without breaking. Enough inputs have turned to separate this from a balanced reading, while credit and liquidity have not confirmed the move.
The inputs disagree, or agree only weakly. No direction is present in the data either way, which is itself worth knowing rather than a gap in the measurement.
More inputs are improving than deteriorating, without the breadth that would make it a clean expansion. Conditions are constructive, but uneven.
Growth, liquidity and risk appetite point the same way, with most inputs positive at once. The inputs agree; that agreement is a description of conditions, not a forecast of returns.
What sits behind it
Seven of the key indicators behind the reading, with their latest values. Each is scored against its own history rather than against a forecast, so the signal describes conditions as they are, not as anyone expects them to be.
Initial jobless claims, the fastest-moving read on employment. Deterioration here usually appears before it shows up anywhere else.
The earnings yield on equities relative to inflation-protected government bond yields. A low premium means less compensation for taking equity risk.
Cash the Federal Reserve leaves available to markets once the Treasury account and overnight reverse repo are removed. Risk assets tend to track it.
The extra yield demanded to hold high-yield corporate debt. Spreads widen when lenders sense stress, usually before equities react.
The gap between ten-year and two-year Treasury yields. It carries the bond market’s view of growth and policy over the next couple of years.
A Chicago Fed composite of credit, leverage and risk measures. Easier conditions make it cheaper for the economy to fund itself.
The inflation rate implied by ten-year Treasuries versus their index-linked equivalent. Both extremes are unhelpful; the middle is where policy has room to move.
How it has moved
Every reading published since daily recording began. The shaded zones are the five regime bands, so a line leaving one is the composite changing regime rather than drifting within it. Hover any point for its date and value.
How the reading is built
Thirteen series are pulled each evening from FRED, the St. Louis Fed's public data service. They cover activity, the labour market, real rates, the yield curve, credit spreads, financial conditions, liquidity, inflation expectations, the dollar, oil, volatility, equity trend and the equity risk premium.
The scope is the United States. Twelve of the thirteen series measure the US economy or US markets; Brent crude is the one globally priced input, and the trade-weighted dollar measures the dollar against everyone else rather than conditions elsewhere. There is no European, Asian or emerging market data in the reading. That is deliberate: US financial conditions are what global risk assets price against, and US data publishes faster and gets revised less than most alternatives. It does mean the reading describes the US backdrop rather than the world, and should be read that way.
Each series is scored from −1 to +1 against a rolling window of its own history, between roughly one and three years depending on how quickly the series moves. A reading is therefore always relative to what that series normally does rather than to an absolute threshold. Those scores are combined into a weighted composite, with the heaviest weights on the labour market, the equity risk premium and liquidity. That composite is the number above.
The composite falls into one of five bands. A band changes only once the composite has cleared the boundary by a margin, which stops the label flickering when the number drifts across a line and back. If a series is late or missing it is dropped and the remaining weights are rescaled; when less than half the weight is available, no reading is published at all rather than one built on fragments.
Confidence measures agreement: how many inputs point the same way, and how strongly. It is a rough guide rather than a probability. A strong composite with low agreement is a weaker signal than the number alone suggests.