Record High, Record Low

July 13, 2026. The Chartbook. Macro, illuminated.

Record high, record low. The S&P 500 closed Friday within half a percent of its all-time high, credit spreads sit at 270bps pricing nothing, and the VIX is under 16. The same week, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey printed 44.8, the lowest reading in the history of a series that goes back to 1952. The market has never been this calm while the household has never been this dark. One of those two is carrying the right story, and this book is our attempt to figure out which.

The mechanism is not a mystery, and this edition draws it rather than describes it. Fuel and tariffs have pushed headline CPI 1.3 points above core. Real wages are shrinking. Real income growth is zero while real spending still runs 2 percent, and the saving rate at 3 percent says exactly how that gap is being financed. Meanwhile the labor market has frozen rather than broken, producer prices are running almost 9 points hotter than consumer prices, and the credit market naps at the tights while loan officers keep tightening.

One hundred charts, twelve pillars. Almost every one of them is a relationship, a spread, or a transformation, because a data series on its own tells you what happened, and the relationships give you the context you actually need. None of it is a forecast. It is a map of where the weight sits right now, and what would have to change for the call to change.

A word on why it looks like this. This month’s Horizon ran four thousand words and eighteen charts. This chartbook runs a hundred. We do the digging so you do not have to. We go this deep because it is how we build our own read of the cycle, and because the relationships that actually matter only surface when you lay the whole board out at once. The depth is the value, for us and for you.