Sources & Method

Every number on StratMac, and where it comes from

StratMac publishes no number without a traceable source. This page documents every data source used across the site, what each series is used for, and the unit-normalization method applied so that the real (not nominal) signal can be read honestly. If a series is not listed here, it is a derived transformation of a listed source.

Two big sources, one principle. Domestic U.S. series come from the Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED). Cross-country series come from World Bank WDI and WID (World Inequality Database). Everything else is explicitly tagged below.

What "de-dollarized" means here

Nominal dollar values embed two forces at once: real economic activity and monetary debasement. To separate them, StratMac applies one of two unit corrections:

÷ U.S. nominal GDP — for domestic ratios. Dividing a price level, a cost, or a stock by nominal GDP expresses it as a share of national output, removing money-illusion and the dollar-price level. Example: crude oil's cost share of the economy, not its $/barrel sticker.
Purchasing-Power Parity (PPP) — for cross-country comparisons. World Bank PPP GDP converts different economies to a common purchasing-power footing so cross-country levels are not distorted by exchange rates or price levels.

Where a ratio is itself the object of interest (e.g. debt service, net worth to GDP, trade balance to GDP), the raw series and its divisor are both listed so the derivation is fully transparent.

Primary source access — FRED (Federal Reserve)

FRED is the public data arm of the St. Louis Fed. Every domestic U.S. series below is accessed through FRED's public endpoint. The listed ID is the exact FRED series ID. FRED re-hosts data produced by the source agencies — chiefly BEA, BLS, Census, and the Federal Reserve Board, plus EIA, Freddie Mac, S&P/Case-Shiller, the University of Michigan, the Chicago Fed, and NBER, as noted per-series.

US Fiscal & Debt Sustainability

FED_BAL_SHEET_GDP Federal Reserve total assets ÷ GDP — WALCL / GDPC1
FOREIGN_DEBT_SHARE Foreign-held U.S. federal debt ÷ total federal debt — FDHBFRBN / GFDEBTN
Debt service Household debt-service ratio — TDSP
Gross federal debt — GFDEBTN (nominal, and as share of GDP via GDPC1)

US Healthcare

MED_COST_BURDEN Medical-care CPI ÷ headline CPI — CPIMEDSL / CPIAUCSL (the rising medical cost share of the consumer basket)

US Household Wealth

NW_GDP Household net worth ÷ GDP — TNWBSHNO / GDPC1 (note: TNWBSHNO is in millions, GDPC1 in billions; a 1000× unit correction is applied for an honest ~6–8× multiple)
Home equity share Home equity as % of real estate — HOEREPHRE
HSAVE / saving rate Personal saving rate and level — PSAVERT, PMSAVE

US Production & Demand

Real GDP — GDPC1
Gross Domestic Income — GDI
Industrial Production — INDPRO
Rail freight carloads — RAILFRTCARLOADSD11
Truck tonnage index — TRUCKD11

US Labor & Utilization

PAYEMS_GDP Nonfarm payrolls ÷ GDP (payroll intensity of output) — PAYEMS / GDPC1
U-6 unemployment — U6RATE
Employment / population — EMRATIO
Labor-force participation — CIVPART
Avg weekly hours — AWHAE, AWHAETP
Nonfarm labor share — PRS85006173 (2017=100)

US Real Estate & Construction

Housing starts — HOUST
Building permits — PERMIT
30-Year mortgage rate — MORTGAGE30US
Case-Shiller home price index — CSUSHPINSA

US Money & Credit

M2_GDP M2 money supply ÷ GDP — M2SL / GDPC1
M2 — M2SL
GDP deflator — GDPDEF
CPI (headline) — CPIAUCSL
PPI — PPIACO
Consumer credit ÷ income — TOTALSL / DPI
Credit-card (revolving) debt ÷ income — REVOLSL / DPI

US Staple Costs (de-dollarized input costs)

Each fuel/commodity is the physical price divided by nominal GDP, expressing the cost share of the economy. Unless noted, the source is FRED.

FOOD_GDP CPI food ÷ GDP/CPI — CPIUFDNS / CPI
WATER_GDP CPI water & sewerage ÷ GDP — CUUR0000SEHF01 / GDPC1
ELECTRIC_GDP Avg city electricity ($/kWh) ÷ GDP — APU000072610 / GDPC1 (BLS city average; held, not published — see note)
DIESEL_GDP Avg city automotive diesel ($/gal) ÷ GDP — APU000074717 / GDPC1
PROPANE_GDP Mont Belvieu wholesale propane ($/gal) ÷ GDP — MPROPANEMBTX / GDPC1 (EIA wholesale hub price, honest label)

US Forward-Looking

GDPNowcast (Atlanta Fed) — GDPNOW
Consumer sentiment (U. Michigan) — UMCSENT
10Y-2Y spread — T10Y2Y
5Y / 10Y breakeven inflation — T5YIE, T10YIE
Recession probability — RECPROUSM156N
NBER recession indicator — USRECD
NFCI (Chicago Fed) — NFCI
Real fed funds — FEDFUNDS deflated by T5YIE

US Wealth & Income Distribution

Top 1% net-worth share — WFRBST01134
Bottom 50% net-worth share — WFRBSB50215
Gini / income shares — derivations flagged in compute_signal.py

US External Sector

TRADE_BAL_GDP Trade balance ÷ GDP — BOPGSTB / GDPC1
Trade-weighted USD — DTWEXBGS
Current-account — FRED flow data

US Banking & Credit

CILOANS_GDP Commercial & industrial loans ÷ GDP — TOTCI / GDPC1
TOTLOANS_GDP Total loans ÷ GDP — TOTLL / GDPC1
RELLOANS_GDP Real-estate loans ÷ GDP — REALLN / GDPC1
Fed funds — FEDFUNDS
High-yield spread — BAMLH0A0HYM2

Commodity Prices

WTI_GDP WTI crude ÷ GDP — WTISPLC / GDPC1 (global price)
BRENT_GDP Brent crude ÷ GDP — POILBREUSDM / GDPC1 (global price)
COPPER_GDP Copper ÷ GDP — PCOPPUSDM / GDPC1 (global price)
GAS_GDP Henry Hub natural gas ÷ GDP — MHHNGSP / GDPC1 (U.S. wholesale)
HOIL_GDP Heating oil #2 ÷ GDP — APU000072511 / GDPC1 (U.S. retail)
REG_GAS_GDP Regular gasoline ÷ GDP — GASREGM / GDPC1 (U.S. retail)

US Stagflation (price level / real output)

STAG GDP deflator ÷ real GDP — GDPDEF / GDPC1 (rises when prices outpace real output after removing money growth)

Cross-country series

Purchasing Power Parity (40 cards)

Nominal and PPP GDP per country, plus the nominal/PPP ratio (a price-level benchmark).

World Bank WDI — GDP, GDP per capita, PPP conversion — NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD, NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD, NY.GDP.MKTP.CD (via World Bank API, multi-country in one request)
IMF WEO / World Bank ICP — peer sources used to cross-check PPP estimates

Global Wealth per Capita (35 cards)

Each card = a country's wealth-per-adult ÷ U.S. GDP-per-capita, a normalized comparison.

WID (World Inequality Database) — wealth-per-adult series, variable ahweali992 (per-adult, full population)
UBS / Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook — trusted USD per-adult anchors used to validate the PPP/local-currency bridge
World Bank / IMF FX — exchange-rate basis for the unit bridge

Transparency note — Turkiye, Argentina, EU. Per the data-correctness policy, cards whose wealth-per-adult data cannot be converted to USD verifiably are unpublished, not guessed. A cross-country unit bridge (WID local/PPP + FX, validated against UBS anchors) is required before those cards return. See the site's policy documentation.

Method / transformation

De-dollarization: every ÷GDP series divides the nominal physical series by U.S. nominal GDP (GDPC1, real GDP set) to express cost/share. Cross-country PPP series divide by World Bank PPP GDP.
Signal computation: each series is fit to an ARIMA(1,1,0) model; the residual is sigma-scaled to a percentile and a streak, producing the color badge on each card. Units never escape raw ${series}${(id)} magnitudes (see api/compute_signal.py, scripts/fetch_fred_data.py).
Window: cards plot data from 2000-01-01 onward by default; pre-2000 history is preserved in the data files but not displayed.

Update cadence

FRED series are refreshed on a scheduled fetch cycle; the pipeline (fetch_fred_data.py → compute_signal.py) regenerates the derived ratios and signals, and the live site reflects the latest committed data. World Bank / WID cross-country data is updated less frequently, on manual review.