Markets
Four ways the market reads the world: what stocks are worth, what money costs, what the dollar buys, and how scared everyone is.
Since 2016 the S&P 500 has roughly tripled — through a one-month COVID crash and the fastest Fed hiking cycle in four decades — to sit near an all-time high. The policy rate went from a 0.05% floor to 5.33% and back toward 3.6%; the dollar strengthened then eased; volatility spiked to a near-record in March 2020 and has since settled into a long calm.
The through-line is the price of money. When the Fed floored rates in 2020, stocks soared, the dollar held, and fear evaporated; when it hiked hard in 2022-23, every panel felt it. This is the snapshot. COVID through the FRED lens is the deep dive into the shock that reshaped all four.
Policy rate vs the long rate
monthlyThe federal funds rate (what the Fed sets) against the 10-year Treasury yield (what the market sets). Fed funds sat at a 0.05% floor through 2020-21, then climbed to 5.33% by August 2023 — the fastest tightening in four decades. The 10-year rose more gently, from a 0.52% pandemic low to ~4.5%. Through 2022-24 the short rate sat *above* the long rate — an inverted curve, historically a recession warning — before re-normalising. Both now sit in the higher-for-longer regime.
@admin · 27 May 2026
US Dollar (broad index)
dailyThe broad trade-weighted dollar. It strengthened through the Fed's hiking cycle to a peak of 130 in January 2025 — higher US rates pull capital in, and the dollar is the safe-haven of choice in stress — then eased to ~119 as rate cuts came into view. The long-run floor was 85 in 2011, when US rates were pinned near zero.
@admin · 27 May 2026
Volatility (VIX)
dailyThe 'fear gauge' — the market's expected volatility over the next month. It spiked to 82.7 in March 2020, within a whisker of its 2008 record, as COVID hit. Outside such moments it spends most of its time below 20: the calm is the default, the spikes are the news. At 16.6 today, the market is pricing in little fear.
@admin · 27 May 2026
Discussion of this dashboard
Threads here are about the dashboard as a whole — its framing, what's missing, whether the constituent indicators tell a coherent story. Per-indicator discussion lives under each panel above.
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7,473 in May 2026, near an all-time high. The index has roughly tripled since this window opens in 2016 — but not in a straight line. It fell from 3,380 (February 2020) to 2,237 in a single month as COVID hit, the fastest bear market on record, then more than tripled off that low. The 2022 rate-hike selloff is the other visible dip; everything since has been a grind higher.
@admin · 27 May 2026