About Global Pendulum | Global Pendulum

What this is

Global Pendulum puts the big global indicators (stocks, interest rates, the dollar, oil, gold, inflation and more) back into their own history: whether each is above or below its own normal, how far it has swung, which ones are driving which, and what happened in the past after the same position. It is updated every two weeks.

It tries to solve a common problem: financial websites lay out every day’s numbers, and after reading a great deal you may still not know where the big picture stands. Here we look only at monthly data and only at position, and we show the basis for every statement we make.

Where we stand

Position and history only; no buy or sell advice. Hot and cold describe position, not good or bad: warm does not mean a fall is coming, and a far swing does not mean a quick swing back.
No fees, no ads, no sponsorship. There are no memberships or paid content, and we recommend no financial products.
No cookies, no tracking; no reader data collected except emails you choose to send. See Privacy.
Both sides, always. Every page says whether this measure is useful for that indicator, when links did not hold, and where samples are too small to draw conclusions.

How it is made

Logo: a dial that measures the swingA miniature of the dial on the front page. The half circle works like a protractor measuring the swing: the cold side (blue) on the left, the hot side (amber) on the right, the usual level in the middle. The bob is a globe.

TypefacesHeadings and numbers in Source Serif 4, body text in Noto Sans CJK; the Chinese and Japanese editions set headings in Noto Serif CJK. All are open-source fonts (SIL OFL), and the site ships only the characters it uses.

coldcoolneutralwarmhotbrass

ColorsFive levels from blue (cold) to orange (hot), the same as on the dial; brass only for scales, lines and frames; ivory by day, deep blue by night.

All data come from public sources (central banks, the OECD, the World Bank, the BIS, the ECB, the Federal Reserve, Professor Shiller and others). Software downloads the data, runs the calculations and writes each issue’s highlights; for the method, see How hot and cold are measured.
The copperplate-style illustrations were generated by an AI image model from the author’s ideas; the background music was produced by DingSong with an AI music model (Google Lyria) and is licensed to this site.
The English and Japanese editions are translated by AI using a shared glossary, and the Simplified Chinese edition is converted automatically by software. If they differ, the Traditional Chinese edition prevails.

Author

CY LABThe author of Global Pendulum, who also made these sites: Still Water (Be the Master of Your Money), On the Shoulders of Value Giants (the public 13F holdings of value investors, read together), DingSong and HaDop. The boundaries of the five levels (20, 40, 60 and 80) are the same as in Still Water; the difference is that this site always calls a reading above its own normal “hot”, in order to catch outliers.

Contact

Questions, corrections and suggestions are welcome by email: cylab.contact@gmail.com. We cannot answer questions about individual investments.