Replay.FearGreedChart
Recession Conditions · Updated daily

Reading conditions…

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3
times in the last 30 years conditions looked roughly like today without a recession following within a year — the 1998 scare, 2011 EU stress, 2022 credit widening. This describes resemblance, not destiny.

What's behind the reading

5 inputs

Each bar shows where today sits between calm expansion and pre-recessionary. Tap any name for the full explanation.

The same gauge, through past cycles

Where this index read before past recessions (shaded), and where it sits today.

Conditions index Today ▮ shaded = NBER recession
↳ Replay 2000↳ Replay 2008↳ Replay 2020

How to read this

A resemblance gauge, not a forecast. A high number means today's leading indicators read the way they typically did before past recessions — it never says one is coming, and never outputs a probability.

Each indicator is scored by where today's value falls between its calm-expansion range and its pre-recession range, then blended: yield curve 30%, credit spread 25%, jobless claims 20%, business conditions 15%, sentiment 10%. The yield curve weighs most as the most-studied signal — but it inverts early and often un-inverts just before a recession starts, so credit and labor are weighted alongside it.

Three inputs are calibrated against US recessions since 1976; two (credit spread, sentiment) use documented fixed thresholds where deep history isn't reliably available. Every input is live — macro from MacroRead (FRED & public sources), sentiment from FearGreedChart.