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Macro Surprise & Data Momentum
Each US data series is scored against its own 5-year history. 0 = worst reading on record, 100 = best. Composite aggregates growth, labor, inflation, and activity. Updated daily.
Composite momentum
— / 100
Insufficient data
0 / 8 series active
Simple average of per-series percentile ranks
Growth
Real GDP (QoQ SAAR)
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- 3m avg
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- 12m avg
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- Momentum
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Quarterly, seasonally-adjusted annualized rate of real GDP growth.
Labor
Nonfarm payrolls (MoM change)
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- 3m avg
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- 12m avg
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- Momentum
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Month-over-month change in total nonfarm employment.
Unemployment rate
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- 3m avg
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- 12m avg
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- Momentum
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Headline U-3 unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted.
Initial jobless claims
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- 3m avg
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- 12m avg
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- Momentum
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4-week moving average of initial unemployment claims.
Inflation
Headline CPI (YoY)
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- 3m avg
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- 12m avg
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- Momentum
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12-month change in headline CPI, all urban consumers.
Core CPI (YoY)
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- 3m avg
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- 12m avg
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- Momentum
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12-month change in core CPI, excluding food and energy.
Activity
Retail sales (YoY)
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- 3m avg
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- 12m avg
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- Momentum
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12-month change in advance retail and food-service sales.
Industrial production (YoY)
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- 3m avg
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- 12m avg
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- Momentum
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12-month change in industrial production index.
Methodology
- Each indicator is transformed to a comparable form (year-over-year, month-over-month change, or level as appropriate), then ranked as a percentile against its own 5-year history.
- For indicators where higher = hotter economy (e.g., GDP, payrolls), the momentum score equals the raw percentile. For inverted indicators (unemployment, initial claims), the score is 100 minus the percentile so the scale is uniform.
- The composite is a simple equal-weighted average of per-series momentum scores across all active indicators. Missing series are dropped rather than penalized.
- Trend labels ("accelerating", "decelerating") compare the trailing 3-period mean against the trailing 12-period mean, with a minimum effect size of 5% of the 12m mean to filter noise.
- This is not a consensus-surprise index in the Citigroup / Bloomberg sense (no consensus forecast series is used). It measures data relative to its own trend and history, which is a different question but practically correlated.
Related tools
Recession Probability →
Composite odds of a US recession, computed daily.
Financial Conditions →
NFCI, Convex CNLI, credit spreads, and cross-asset stress.
Fed Rate Simulator →
Market-implied Fed path plus dovish/base/hawkish scenarios.
Data API →
Pull any of these series into Python, R, or your spreadsheet.
Get notified when the composite momentum flips from accelerating to decelerating or back.
Sources: FRED (BEA, BLS, Federal Reserve, Census). Methodology: src/lib/tools/stress-composite.ts. Not a consensus-surprise index. Not a regulated benchmark.