GlobalFlows

The idea

Read left to right. That is the order money actually travels: cash conditions show up first, rates and the dollar pass the pressure around, growth and inflation say what households and firms are doing, and risk tells you whether markets have noticed yet. When you know that mix, you can ask the useful question: so what for assets?

1. Liquiditycash & plumbing
2. Ratesyields · dollar
3. Growthreal activity
4. Inflationprice pressure
5. Riskfear & spreads

Tap a component — or All, FX, Markets — to jump to that shelf in the book. Compare, Chart, and the lookback stay put. Markets is shelved with titled rows (Duration, Credit, Equities, and the rest), not a second chip bar.

Where the numbers come from

Public sources: FRED, the New York Fed, Yahoo Finance, Bundesbank, Bank of England, Japan’s Ministry of Finance, S&P earnings yield from multpl, and the CFTC gold positioning report (via FuturesBench). China’s credit stock is the BIS series, carried on FRED. Every row names its own source when you tap it. A morning job at 8:47 New York time — after the 8:30 prints, before the open — pulls the book, rebuilds the archive from 2003, refits the calibration, bakes today’s regime, then runs the sanity check. If the check fails, the bake does not publish.

Market prices move every day; payrolls arrive monthly; GDP and China’s credit stock arrive quarterly and late. A series that has gone quiet past its allowed age stops voting and disappears from the table rather than casting a stale opinion. Methods and today’s fitted centres are on Math.

Regime components

Each component answers one question: is cash cheap or scarce, is the price of money easy or tight, is real activity strong or soft, is price pressure hot or cold, is the market calm or frightened.

• Chevron — ▲1m up, ▼1m down, –1m flat. Which way it has moved over one month. This is the turn, not the level. The table lookback does not move it.
• Word — Liquidity Easing / Neutral / Tightening; Rates Easy / Neutral / Tight; Growth Strong / Mid / Soft; Inflation Hot / Mid / Cold; Risk Risk-on / Neutral / Risk-off.
• Score and needle — −1.5 to +1.5. Green and red take the ends at ±0.45. Between the cuts the word, the needle, and the tap tell the story — not a third colour. The needle is drawn on ±1; past that the number can still climb. Positive is the reflationary end. If the indicators behind it disagree sharply, the tap says so. The word still names the average.

All five share one axis. Green is the reflationary end — more cash, easier funding, firmer growth, hotter prices, more appetite for risk. Red is the contractionary end — the same five things the other way. The middle is not a third colour: Mid, Neutral, and Mixed are the word, the needle, and the tap. Neither end means good or bad. Green on Inflation is Hot: prices are running, not the app approving. That is the one trap. On the six asset classes, green is in favor and red is out of favor. Mixed is the word and the needle lean, not a third colour.

1w · 2w · 1m · 3m · 6m is the lookback for the table and charts. Three months is the table default. Chevrons, duration, credit, and in / mixed / out stay on the 1m turn. The table buttons do not rewrite the six classes.

Dollars are made in more than one place. Liquidity watches four balance sheets, not only the Fed: the Fed, the ECB, the Bank of Japan, and China. The app calls that set G4 — note it is not the usual G4, because the Bank of England is not in it and the China leg is FX reserves rather than the PBoC total, which FRED does not carry. Reserves are the part that recycles into world markets. Rates includes German, UK, and Japanese 10-years. Growth and Inflation are still US reads. China’s credit stock lags two to three quarters, so it votes Liquidity at half weight.

Growth’s coincident ballot is jobs, claims, GDP, and the activity indexes, and it carries half weight. That is on purpose. Jobs and GDP describe the quarter that just ended; the Empire and Philadelphia factory surveys describe the one starting. When the surveys are at the rail while the hard data is still Mid, the hard data has moved their way within a quarter about two thirds of the time since 2003, against a coin flip on every other day. So the surveys are allowed to take the word. When they are out ahead like that, the tap says so — the reading is early, not confirmed, and that is the distinction worth making rather than hiding it.

The six asset classes

Under the five sits a strip of six: Treasuries (5 / 10 / 30), Credit (IG / HY), Equities (Cy / Df), Crypto, Gold, Commodity (Oi / Cu). Green is in favor, red is out. Mixed is the word, the needle lean, and the tap — not a third colour. The needle shows lean within the call. It cannot flip the call. The table lookback does not rewrite in, mixed, or out.

The six read the score on each component, not only the painted word. A score counts as fully reflationary at the colour line +0.45 and fully contractionary at −0.45, so Neutral Risk at +0.40 is almost Risk-on for every net: fear still looks cheap. The two sides are not mirrors. The reflationary side starts counting from −0.2 and the contractionary side only from −0.2 downward, so a component sitting at exactly 0.00 carries about a third of a reflationary vote and no contractionary one. That is deliberate — drain and fear have to be clearly present before they price, while ample conditions are the resting state — and it does tilt every net slightly toward reflation. A mix that looks late — Growth Strong while fear is still cheap — takes Equities, copper, and often high yield out. Over the full 2003–2026 record that overlay has an edge on about a one-month horizon. The years since 2023 are a thinner sample: Credit almost never got to in, Gold almost never got to out.

• The pair line follows the six when they have already chosen. Equities out and long Treasuries in is long bonds over stocks — even if duration risk is mixed (that mix is 5s versus 10s, not silence).
• Duration risk rising and credit risk falling → stocks over long Treasuries
• Duration risk falling and credit risk rising → long Treasuries over stocks
• Both rising, cash paid → cash over stocks and bonds
• Both falling → risk assets and duration can both work

• Treasuries — 5 on the strip is cash (the Rates call). 10 and 30 are duration. The parent call and the parent needle are the long end only; the 5s are reported next to them, not voted into them.
• Credit — IG is duration plus credit. HY is growth and fear, and whether spreads pay you.
• Equities — fear, growth, and whether you are paid. Strong growth while fear is still cheap is late. Cy leans growth; Df leans fear.
• Crypto — Bitcoin. Easy plumbing into cheap fear. Does not vote a component.
• Gold — crisis plumbing, an inflation wage, or deflation fear. Crowded speculative longs tax the box. Sometimes none of those is live, and the app says so; sometimes two are live and they cancel.
• Commodity — oil carries the dollar and inflation; copper wants paid fear or soft growth, not firm growth into cheap fear. They are not the same trade.

Tap a class for why and the split. History sits under that: one verdict for the class, then a short rose-in line for each tenor or sleeve (5s / 10s / 30s, IG / HY, Cy / Df). Gold and Crypto stay one full analog — they have no split. Regime is the longer sheet, including Watch — the print that would prove the call wrong.

What happened last time

The app finds the days in its 23-year record whose five-component mix most resembles today, and reports what happened next: the median move and how often it rose. A base rate, not a forecast.

On a split class the verdict is stated once. Each sleeve keeps its own rose-in rate, because 5s, 10s, and 30s do not move as one. A close match is worth weight; a distant match is context. When history disagrees with today’s call, the tap says so. The title on the strip does not change colour.

How we know it is right

Nothing here has ever broken loudly. Every real bug ran clean, produced a plausible number, and stated something false with total confidence. Four standing checks, plus a forward record. The daily bake will not publish if the first check fails.

• Sanity — recomputes all eleven boxes independently and confirms they match what was published.
• Band audit — flags a series pinned at an extreme, or a colour that almost never fires.
• Episode audit — lines the five up against 24 named events, each with an expected reading written from what actually happened.
• Call audit — whether classes called in favor actually outperformed the ones called out, on independent windows, not one episode counted fifty times.

The distinction the five rest on: Rates reads Easy through the 2013 taper tantrum. The 10-year went from 1.6% to 3.0% in four months — that looks wrong until you notice the 2-year sat at 0.2%, QE was still running, and the curve steepened. Rates were easy the whole way; they became less easy. The drama lives in the turn. A reading that went red there would be reporting the turn and calling it the level.

The only test that cannot flatter the app is forward time. Each morning the six calls are written down and later marked. That record began in September 2026. It prints empty on purpose until a class has twelve independent windows, and it is not on this site yet — it runs alongside the other three checks and will appear here once there is something in it worth reading. Today that is weeks of overlapping days, which is nothing.

Honest limits

• The archive starts in 2003. It has never seen the 1970s, and it has never seen Volcker.
• Some economic vintages only reach back to around 2016; before that the app is reading revised figures.
• Bitcoin’s record starts in 2014. Its base rates are not an equal sample beside Treasuries or equities.
• “In favor” means this mix has historically rewarded owning this, over about a one-month horizon, on the 2003–2026 record. Since 2023, Credit has almost never printed in and Gold has almost never printed out — this cycle is not the whole archive. A base rate, not a target, and not advice.
• Bands and checklists were fitted on 2003–2026 and graded on 2003–2026. The exact weights are judgment against maybe five independent macro cycles. That is a real overfitting risk. The forward record is the protection.

Glossary

Component

One of the five pieces of the regime: Liquidity, Rates, Growth, Inflation, Risk.

Word

The plain-English state — Hot, Soft, Tightening.

Needle

The score on the scale. On an asset class, lean within the call — it cannot flip the call.

1w · 2w · 1m · 3m · 6m

Lookback for the table and charts. Table default 3m. Chevrons use 1m.

In / mixed / out of favor

The asset-class call. In is green, out is red. Mixed is the word, the needle, and the tap.

Duration risk

Whether owning long bonds is likely to hurt.

Credit risk

Whether borrowers are likely to keep paying.

Analog

A past day whose five-component mix resembles today’s. The base rate is what happened next. On a split class: one verdict, then rose-in % per sleeve. A loose match is context, not a second essay.