Sources & Methodology

How to read this dashboard

Observation dates describe the period measured. Retrieval timestamps describe when our server checked the source. Neither is automatically the release date. Release timestamps are not invented when providers do not expose them. Daily observations can predate today because of publication lags and holidays; monthly and annual statistics follow their own schedules.

Official values are retained at source precision and displayed with exactly one decimal place, including the administration table and chart readouts. Small New CISS observations can therefore round to 0.0; this does not mean stress is literally zero. Charts plot actual dated observations, not synthetic values or forecasts, and have independent vertical scales. Dense histories are reduced to date-ordered block minima and maxima plus both endpoints, preserving extremes while keeping pages lightweight; not every daily observation is drawn. Every chart uses the same rolling five-year horizontal window. A click opens the full observation history; pointer or touch inspection and a keyboard slider show dated values. Shorter source histories leave the earlier part of the window empty and are marked. Policy rates use step lines and can carry an actual earlier decision into the window. Changes between two observations are not described as weekly changes unless both observations are weekly.

Refresh and validation

The server-side data cache checks the configured official sources when its seven-day or fourteen-day interval is due. Public data requests can trigger this bounded revalidation; visitors cannot choose sources, submit observations, change settings or force a refresh. The Monday task verifies the persisted result. The owner can also refresh immediately from the protected administration area. The US unemployment and CPI histories use FRED’s public CSV downloads, with at least six prior calendar years requested. They originate at BLS: UNRATE corresponds to LNS14000000; CPIAUCNS corresponds to CUUR0000SA0. No BLS key is needed. BLS’s official news releases independently check the latest month and provide a headline fallback if the history service is unavailable. An optional registered BLS key adds a historical-data backup. Exhausted unregistered BLS requests are not retried. The administration page can switch between seven-day and fourteen-day intervals, or run an immediate refresh. Daily sources are checked weekly, not streamed live. The last valid series remains available after a source failure, with a visible warning and its original observation date. Each source is independent: one failed request does not replace every value with missing data.

Validation rejects non-finite values, future observations, implausible ranges, unexpected BLS series identifiers and empty responses. Yield maturities must share a date. US inflation requires an observation exactly twelve months earlier. Monthly sources delayed beyond 100 days and daily sources beyond 14 days are flagged; policy settings are treated separately because their effective dates can legitimately be older. Annual observations older than two years are marked archival.

Regional comparability

The euro area is not the European Union or all of Europe. ECB U2 series use a changing euro-area composition. The euro-area Buffett variant uses ECB U2 resident issuers and U2 national accounts, both with changing membership; this is not an all-Europe equity portfolio including Britain and Switzerland. European CAPE refers to a broader, MSCI-based European equity universe, including Britain and Switzerland. Its historical research reference is identified separately from the current US Shiller series. The US and euro-area unemployment age ranges differ. CPI-U and HICP use different baskets. US par yields and European AAA spot yields have different constructions. We do not apply a universal warning threshold or combine these measures into a crash probability.

Data rights and acknowledgements

The ECB permits reuse of its published statistics with attribution and preservation of the original data and metadata; third-party exceptions still apply. Eurostat permits commercial reuse of the European statistical series used here with attribution. The World Bank identifies the selected market-capitalisation series as CC BY 4.0. These permissions do not extend to provider logos or unrelated third-party material.

© 2026 Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Its content is supplied under the applicable use terms. The target-range information is governed by those terms. The Bank neither endorses this republication nor accepts responsibility or liability for its publication by Crash Indicators or for the reader’s use. The derived midpoint and all editorial interpretation are ours. The original source is available without charge from the Markets API. Reused source information retains the original permissions and restrictions.

CAPE source and remaining coverage

The US Shiller value is taken from the latest freely accessible original workbook at Robert Shiller’s data site, with its observation month, source notes and preliminary status. A public download is not presented as an explicit open-data licence. A European equivalent has been identified: MSCI-based European CAPE calculated by Barclays Research and reported in Robeco’s Expected Returns research. The dashboard cites a historical published reference, labels the report’s September 2025 publication date and avoids assigning an unsupported exact observation month. A current freely redistributable continuous European CAPE feed has not been established. Research Affiliates provides another CAPE approach but restricts redistribution. A normal P/E or the price of a CAPE strategy ETF is not substituted.

The euro-area Buffett calculation replaces the old 2018 World Bank archive. Monthly ECB securities data are combined with trailing four-quarter nominal GDP from Eurostat via the ECB. Its observation date is the market-value month; the denominator’s end quarter is displayed separately. This is a transparent euro-area variant, with different coverage and frequency from the US series.

Technology and dependencies

This website uses a small React interface, Vinext server routes and persistent Cloudflare D1 storage provided through Sites. Data requests run on the server. Charts are inline SVG; no chart CDN, stock photography, analytics, advertising scripts or browser calls to economic-data APIs are used. No WordPress installation or WordPress plugins have been changed. The selected public domain is crashindicator.com; hosting remains on Sites and does not require a WordPress installation.