The Indicator Set
This dashboard documents the indicator set that powers the live market data across BELLINGS — the same series shown in the site-wide market ribbon and the Latest Market Snapshot. Every series is drawn from public Federal Reserve data, refreshed on an automated schedule.
Benchmark Rates
Effective Federal Funds Rate: The volume-weighted median rate on overnight federal funds transactions, published daily by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It is the operational anchor for all short-term dollar funding costs.
SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate): The broad measure of the cost of borrowing cash overnight collateralized by Treasury securities. Since the LIBOR transition, SOFR is the reference rate for the vast majority of floating-rate leveraged loans and private credit facilities — which makes its level the single most direct driver of interest burdens across levered corporate borrowers.
10-Year Treasury Yield: The benchmark long rate from the Federal Reserve H.15 release. It sets the base for investment-grade corporate funding costs and drives duration-sensitive demand from insurers and pensions.
Bank Prime Loan Rate: The rate banks charge their most creditworthy commercial customers, relevant chiefly for smaller middle-market and asset-based facilities priced off prime.
Credit Spreads
Investment-Grade Option-Adjusted Spread (OAS): The ICE BofA US Corporate Index OAS, distributed via FRED, measures the additional yield investors demand to hold investment-grade corporate bonds over a duration-matched Treasury curve. It distinguishes changes in corporate risk compensation from changes in the underlying risk-free rate.
High-Yield Option-Adjusted Spread (OAS): The ICE BofA US High Yield Index OAS, distributed via FRED, measures the extra yield investors demand to hold speculative-grade bonds over Treasuries. It is the market's clearest single-number verdict on credit risk appetite: sub-300bp readings signal exuberance, moves above 500bp signal genuine stress.
Bank Credit Quality
C&I Delinquency Rate: The share of commercial and industrial loans at commercial banks that are past due, from the Federal Reserve's quarterly charge-off and delinquency release. It moves slowly but confirms — or contradicts — what market spreads imply about actual borrower performance.
C&I Charge-Off Rate: The share of commercial and industrial loans that banks have written off as uncollectible, from the same quarterly Federal Reserve release. Charge-offs lag delinquencies — a delinquent loan either cures or is eventually charged off — so the pair together shows both the early-warning signal and the realized loss.
How to Read Them Together
No single series is decisive. The combination matters: rising SOFR with widening investment-grade and high-yield OAS and rising delinquencies and charge-offs is a genuine tightening cycle; rising rates with stable spreads and flat credit-quality measures is a repricing, not a retrenchment. The BELLINGS editorial desk reads every ranked development against this indicator backdrop.
Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Federal Reserve H.15 and H.8 releases; Federal Reserve charge-off and delinquency data; ICE BofA index data via FRED.