Economic Compass
The Economic Compass places the US and euro-area economy on two axes, growth momentum and inflation momentum, each measured as a z-score against its own long-run trend. It is a diagnostic instrument built from public data, not a forecast and not investment advice: it describes where the economy appears to be right now, not where it is going next.
Eight gauges track the individual series behind the two axes. Colour is used only where a threshold was explicitly defined; every other gauge is plain information. Every number carries its source and an as-of date.
This page renders a live phase-space plot of growth and inflation momentum, with sparkline gauges for the underlying series. Drawing it needs JavaScript. The data behind it is public either way, published as JSON at constantin.glez.de/data/compass.json.
Gauges
Contributions
Each axis is a composite of several series. A blank contribution means the series has not reported for this month yet, not that it is zero.
| Axis | Series | Contribution |
|---|
Method
The chain from a raw series to a plotted z-score: raw level, year-over-year change, a z-score against an EMA-weighted baseline of the series’ own past (ten-year half-life, at least eight years of history required before a series is used), then an equal-weight composite per axis. Every reading is point-in-time from the latest published vintage; macro series are revised, so a historical point differs from what was knowable on the day it was first published. The composite draws on Ray Dalio’s public writing on economic machine cycles; this page is Constantin’s own implementation, not affiliated with or endorsed by Dalio or Bridgewater.