What This Is

The Stock Market Cycle Tracker is a real-time dashboard that analyzes stock market valuations using 140+ years of historical data. It calculates a composite score (0-100) based on two well-established valuation metrics, comparing current market conditions to historical norms.

This tool is descriptive, not predictive. It does not offer investment advice. It shows where current valuations stand relative to history and what happened in similar periods.

Methodology

The composite score is the average of two percentile rankings:

Shiller CAPE Ratio — The cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio, using 10 years of earnings data to smooth business cycle effects. Created by Nobel laureate Robert Shiller.
Buffett Indicator — Total stock market capitalization divided by GDP. Named after Warren Buffett, who called it "probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment."

Each metric is compared against its full historical range to determine a percentile. The composite score averages these two percentiles.

Note: Our Buffett Indicator uses Federal Reserve Z.1 data for market capitalization, which is broader than the Wilshire 5000 used by most sources. This produces higher readings but enables longer historical comparison (back to 1947).

Data Sources

Shiller CAPE: Robert Shiller, Yale University — econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm

Market Capitalization: Federal Reserve Z.1 Financial Accounts (BOGZ1LM883164115Q) — FRED

GDP: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis via FRED — FRED

Credit Spread: Moody's BAA Corporate Bond vs 10-Year Treasury — FRED

S&P 500: S&P Dow Jones Indices via FRED — FRED

Creator

Alex Panetta

Journalist & AI Student

I spent almost 30 years as a journalist at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Politico and The Canadian Press, most recently covering U.S. politics from Washington. I am currently writing about and studying AI while getting a master's in AI Management at Georgetown University. I'm focusing on practical and ethical applications of AI tools for businesses and individuals.

I built this dashboard to demonstrate how AI tools now enable anyone to create custom data visualizations — no coding experience required. I write about practical, ethical AI applications on my Substack.

alexpanetta.substack.com

How This Was Built

This dashboard was built using AI-assisted development with four main tools:

Claude (Anthropic) — AI assistant that wrote the code based on natural language descriptions
GitHub — Code repository and version control
Railway — Backend server hosting the API that fetches live data
Vercel — Frontend hosting for the website

Total cost: approximately $25-40/month. Development time: several sessions over a few days.

Read the full story: I did not build this app to predict a stock market crash but...

Disclaimer

This dashboard is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice, and no investment decisions should be made based on this tool. Past performance and historical patterns do not guarantee future results. The creator is not a licensed financial advisor.

About Stock Market Cycle Tracker