How exuberant is the market — right now.
One number, 0–100, for how expensive and fragile the whole US stock market is — built from a century of valuation, leverage, and credit data. Higher means new money faces worse long-term odds. It moves over months, not days.
Expensive and demanding — where 1929, 2021, and today sit. Be selective with new money.
When the gauge runs hot, the decade ahead has paid poorly.
From attractivelevels (20–40), the S&P 500 returned +7.3%/yr real over the following ten years. From today's elevated reading, just +2.4%/yr — a positive real decade only 63% of the time.
Two questions: how expensive, and how primed to break.
How far prices sit above a century of fundamentals (CAPE + market-cap/GDP).
Valuation after accounting for inflation and interest rates.
How much extra you're paid to own stocks over safe bonds.
How much borrowed money is riding on the market — how primed it is to force-sell.
Whether lenders are underpricing risk. Credit senses trouble before stocks.
The six bands.
A high reading doesn't predict a crash tomorrow — it means the odds and risk-reward for new money have gotten worse.
Built from Shiller (CAPE, Excess CAPE Yield), FRED (credit spreads, market-cap/GDP, rates) and FINRA (margin debt) — each signal scored by how far it sits from its own century of history, then blended. Deep history from bundled data; recent months reconstructed live.