The Dial Macro

Macro Conditions — Mar 24, 2026 Score: 43.7 | 🟡 Neutral 24h: +0.08 | 5Y percentile: P26 7D: −0.3 Biggest drag: Rates (−5.7 today) Biggest 7D swing: Funding (+12.6) 13 restrictive, 9 supportive. The "Neutral" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. See today's macro brief → bhadial.com

Trump right now

The Risk module just swung +32 points in one week. That's the single largest weekly move across all 7 macro modules. A week ago, Risk was near zero — peak fear. Today it's 29. Still red, but recovering. VIX term structure is normalizing, which means: The market is still nervous, but less panicked than last week. Nervous ≠ panicked. That distinction matters. Daily conditions → bhadial.com

Yesterday: 42.5 Today: 43.5 First uptick after 2 straight days of decline. But don't celebrate yet. The bounce came from the plumbing — 3 funding friction factors sitting at their 97th-98th percentile. Repo markets are running smooth. But the pressure is still there: → 14 of 21 factors still restrictive → 10Y Rate Volatility is the biggest single drag (-1.4 pts) → Oil vol at 1st percentile extreme → Neutral regime: Day 22 and counting Tomorrow: Powell speaks at 5:30 ET. One score. Every morning. → bhadial.com

Markets are a multi-factor complex system — until they're not. In extremes, everything collapses into one variable: sentiment. At 16, fear is doing all the talking. But extremes don't last.🫵

😂This is painfully accurate.

🙃NO JIM

Love this. "Should I be trading?" is the question most people skip. I've been building something similar but as a live product — The Dial tracks 47 macro factors across 7 modules (liquidity, funding, treasury, rates, credit, risk, external) and outputs a single daily conditions score. Today it reads 42/100 (23rd percentile of 5Y range). 14 of 21 factors restrictive. Your dashboard's "NO" at 29 lines up perfectly with what we're seeing. Interesting how your breadth + momentum pillars complement our pure macro approach. Yours captures market internals, ours captures the plumbing underneath. Check it out if curious → bhadial.com (free tier covers everything)

I made a "should I be trading?" dashboard. Scores the market across 5 pillars: - volatility (put/call ratio, vix, positioning) - trend (spx vs 20d, 50d, 200d ma's) - breadth (advancing/declining, nas highs/lows) - momentum (sector leaders, laggards, % participation) - macro (fomc, rates, geopolitics) Each is weighted, combined, and averaged to give me a score for the current environment. Basically a yes, no, or stay small. Sometimes I just need someone (or something) to remind me to stay out. Happy to share the prompt if you guys want it...but I made this with @perplexity_ai's Computer.

🙃

Today’s move is a clean bear flattening: 2Y +10bp, 10Y +5bp, 30Y +1.5bp. After yesterday’s FOMC, the front end is repricing a Fed that is not in a hurry to cut. Powell acknowledged higher near-term inflation risk, while the SEP kept the broader rate path largely intact. Not a policy shock — just a reminder that the bar for easier policy is still fairly high.

Wrong question. "What's the macro backdrop?" comes first. 42/100 today. 23rd percentile of 5-year range. 14 of 21 factors restrictive. Funding conditions just dropped 22 points in a week. This isn't a "what to buy" environment. It's a "how much exposure to cut" environment.

🚨 3 macro factors hit 5-year extremes today: • Oil Volatility Deviation: 1st percentile ← historically maxed out • ON RRP Buffer Risk: 1st percentile ← system "safety cushion" near zero • Natural Gas: 100th percentile ← polar opposite of oil Meanwhile 14 of 21 scored factors lean restrictive, yet the regime label hasn't shifted from Neutral in 21 days. The surface looks calm. Underneath, it's not. Macro Score: 42.5/100 (23rd percentile) Track every factor → bhadial.com

Jobless Claims day 📋 Today's macro backdrop is already under pressure: • Score: 42.5/100 (23rd percentile) • Risk module: 26/100 • Funding collapsed -22 pts this week 3 releases at 12:30 ET: → Initial Claims (Mar 14) → Continuing Claims (Mar 7) → 4-Week Average A weak print could push the score toward the 30s. A strong print could stabilize Credit and Risk. Track the real-time impact → bhadial.com

🧐We just dropped a Macro IQ Quiz on The Dial. 👀Our social media guy scored 8/15. Please do better than him. 👇 link bhadial.com/quiz/macro-iq

Most people think they understand macro. We built 3 tests to find out if that's true. → IQ Test: Do you actually know how the system works? → Personality Test: What kind of macro observer are you? → Fed Sim: Can you match Powell's decisions? bhadial.com/quiz

FOMC day tomorrow. Think you know what the Fed will do? Before Powell speaks, try making his decisions yourself. 5 real historical moments. Same data he had. Same pressure. How many times would you have matched the Chair? bhadial.com/quiz/fed-sim

ON RRP went from $137M two weeks ago to $582M today. Still a rounding error vs the $2.5T peak. But the direction matters — cash is trickling back into the Fed's overnight parking lot. Not because things are getting better. Because the alternatives look worse. When the best risk-adjusted trade in the market is lending to the Fed overnight at 3.5%, that tells you where confidence is.

2018 early Q1 is another one that IG underperformed HY on a spread basis. Same duration mechanics you're describing. The difference this time is the trigger. 2018 was a Fed hiking cycle. 2020 was a liquidity event. This one is an energy shock from an actual shooting war in the Gulf. You can cut rates to fix a rate problem. Harder to cut your way out of $100 oil and a closed strait.

@TheDialMacro IG leading HY is rare. Usually means rate/duration stress, not credit quality, policy response tends to be faster when it does. March 2020 is the closest comp I know. Anyone have others?

IG credit spreads are now wider than HY spreads. Read that again. IG: -1.56% (P13) HY: -1.54% (P18) Investment-grade borrowers are getting repriced faster than junk borrowers. That's... not normal. Usually HY blows out first. When IG leads, it means the stress isn't coming from the weakest links — it's coming from the broad corporate sector. Something to watch closely next week. → bhadial.com