What's breaking,
and how bad it's been before.

Forty-three indicators of financial stress, drawn from eight United States government sources, updated three times every weekday and ranked against twenty-eight years. An app for iPhone and iPad.

Crashboard: Market Barometer

Every part of it free for seven days, from the moment you open it — no card, no sign-up. After that, both readings stay free forever — now and ahead — with every indicator behind conditions now, the world panel and twenty-eight years of it. $29.99 a year for the indicators and history behind the forward lens. iPhone and iPad, iOS 17 or later.

Download on the App Store

The dashboard, explained

1What it leads with — On a day the two lenses disagree, the gap is the first thing on the screen and it names which lens is the lower one. On an ordinary day there is nothing large here at all, which is the point: an instrument with nothing to announce should not announce anything. 2Your first week — Every part of the app is free for seven days from the moment you open it — no card, no sign-up. This bar counts them down and then goes away. Nothing is charged and nothing renews. 3Conditions Now — Stress visible today: credit spreads, bank failures, funding pressure. Its score, how far that is from an ordinary day, and a plain verdict. Every indicator behind it, and the whole record, is free. 4Conditions Ahead — What is building underneath — the yield curve, issuance appetite, what assets cost. Allowed to disagree with the present. The reading is free; a subscription buys the indicators behind it and its history. 5How far from ordinary — Each reading stands on its own scale, marked once per standard deviation of its own twenty-eight years, so a quiet week and a crisis are told apart by distance rather than by shade. 6Around the world — The OFR's stress indices for the United States, other advanced economies and emerging markets, each against its own record. Free, and turned the same way up as every other number here, so higher is calmer. 7One lens at a time — The switch chooses which lens everything below it is showing — the recent months, the whole record, and the indicator panel under them. 8Why it is this colour — The background is the Conditions Ahead reading, ranked against every day since 1998. The key names the five bands it moves between, from Crisis at one end to Exceptional at the other. 9Twenty-eight years — Every day since 1998, each coloured by its own reading. Drag to scan, pick a date, or jump straight to the dot-com bust, 2008 or COVID.

Open the screenshot full size — the dashboard is denser than a phone can show.

Two readings

And where in the world it sits

A third reading, free to everyone: the Office of Financial Research's global stress index, split into the United States, other advanced economies and emerging markets. Each is ranked against its own record rather than against the others — emerging markets swings about a fifth as wide as the United States, so the raw figures are not comparable and the ranks are.

The colour is a rank, not a verdict

The background runs from deep red to deep green, ranked against every day since 1998. It follows the Conditions Ahead reading, and that lens reports its own verdict beside its score, so the colour and the word can never disagree with each other — though either may disagree with the present.

Where the data comes from

All data comes from United States government sources in the public domain, or from sources that explicitly permit redistribution. No licensed market data is used or republished. They publish on their own schedules, noted below: a reading is never fresher than its slowest input, and the app carries how stale each indicator is into the weight it is given.

• Federal Reserve Economic Data — Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Government-authored series only; copyrighted series are excluded at ingest. This product uses FHFA data but is neither endorsed nor certified by FHFA. FRED is the delivery channel rather than the author: the quarterly series include the Federal Reserve Board of Governors' Z.1 financial accounts and the Bureau of Economic Analysis national accounts. 41 series: daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly
• OECD share prices — Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Financial Market: Share Prices for United States, OECD Data Explorer, data-explorer.oecd.org, retrieved from FRED (series SPASTT01USM661N). The one source here that is neither a US government body nor public domain: the OECD permits redistribution and asks to be cited, which is what this line is. It draws one reference chart in the app and contributes to no indicator and no reading. 1 series: monthly, published a few weeks in arrears
• US Treasury Fiscal Data — Bureau of the Fiscal Service, US Department of the Treasury. 5 series: daily, one monthly
• FDIC BankFind — Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. 2 series: checked daily, but bank failures are episodic
• CFTC Commitments of Traders — US Commodity Futures Trading Commission. 7 series: weekly
• US Energy Information Administration 2 series: weekly
• OFR Financial Stress Index — Office of Financial Research, US Department of the Treasury. The index is the OFR's own computed measure; its inputs are not redistributed. 5 series: daily
• USGS earthquake catalogue — US Geological Survey. 1 series: daily
• FEMA disaster declarations — Federal Emergency Management Agency, OpenFEMA. 1 series: checked daily, declarations are episodic

What it costs

Privacy

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