U.S. Financial Markets
How much are interest rates, stocks, house prices and the dollar helping or hurting U.S. growth?
The Federal Reserve Board's index, FCI‑G, turns recent moves in the fed funds rate, long‑term interest rates, stock prices, house prices and the dollar into one number: how much they add to or take from real GDP growth over the next year, in percentage points. Positive means a drag (tighter conditions). Negative means a boost. The Fed publishes it once a month; this page rebuilds it every weekday from public data.
The bars start at the index on the comparison date, add each part's contribution, and end at today's level. ■ Orange: conditions got tighter, a bigger drag on growth. ■ Blue: conditions got easier. Long‑term rates combine the 10‑year Treasury, mortgage rate and BBB corporate bond yield; hover to see each. The comparison uses the close on the chosen date, or the last trading day before it.
Daily. Dashed vertical lines are FOMC meetings; the blue line marks the comparison date. Above zero is a drag on growth, below zero a boost.
Month by month; the last point is today. Shows where today's reading sits against the Fed's index over three decades, including the 2008–09 and 2020 swings.
The Fed's index adds up three‑month changes in each variable over the last 12 quarters (3 years), each multiplied by a weight the Fed publishes. The weights show how much a change made a given time ago still affects growth over the next year. A rise in interest rates or the dollar, or a fall in stock or house prices, pushes the index up (a drag).
Part of what financial markets have done already is still to hit growth. This shows how much of today's effect is still to come in the year after the next four quarters, if nothing in markets changes. It is not a Fed series. It uses the Fed's own weights, shifted ahead one year.
Bottom panel: replicated minus published. Errors are largest before 2000, when some inputs are spliced from substitute series.
Differences from the Fed's monthly values. RMSE is the typical size of the miss, in percentage points of GDP growth. Correlation compares monthly levels.
Are financial conditions tighter or easier than usual, and what changed?
Goldman Sachs publishes a financial conditions index that sits around 100. Higher means tighter conditions; lower means easier. It combines the fed funds rate, the 10‑year Treasury yield, the gap between corporate bond and Treasury yields, stock valuations and the dollar, using weights Goldman has published. This page rebuilds it every weekday from public data. The difference between two dates shows how much conditions tightened or eased in between.
The bars start at the index on the comparison date, add each part's contribution (its weight times the change in the variable), and end at today's level. ■ Orange: tighter. ■ Blue: easier. Hover for the underlying variable. The comparison uses the close on the chosen date, or the last trading day before it.
Daily. Dashed vertical lines are FOMC meetings; the blue line marks the comparison date. Above 100 is tighter than the 2000–2025 average, below 100 is easier.
Daily. Shows where today's reading sits against three decades, including the 2008–09 and 2020 spikes and the 2021 low.
Each part is multiplied by a weight Goldman has published, which reflects how much it matters for the economy, not how much it moves around. Interest rates and spreads are in percentage points. Stock valuations and the dollar are in percent (100 × the log change).
The 2000–2025 averages are fixed, so past values do not change as new data arrive. The difference between two dates does not depend on that choice.
"One point" is how far a variable alone must move to change the index by one point.
Goldman's series is only available on Bloomberg, so I read its values off a chart in a 2022 New York Fed presentation. The chart is a vector graphic, so the 391 monthly points (January 1990 to July 2022) come from the line's exact coordinates, accurate to about 0.01. Goldman's monthly series is an average over the month, so the replication is averaged the same way here.
Both are rescaled to an average of 0 and a standard deviation of 1 since 2000 so they fit on one axis. The two indexes are built differently, so this shows they tell a similar story, not that either is right.
Left: how much each part's contribution typically changes over three months since 2000, in index points. Right: each part's share of the day‑to‑day variation since 2020. Interest rates and spreads carry most of the weight, but stock valuations move by the largest percentages, so they drive the biggest swings.