Built from search enumeration plus live-page verification (the site itself is Cloudflare-gated: scripted fetches 403, the managed browser is hard-flagged even for manual checkbox clicks, and archive.org blocks this network). Coverage years below are from the pages' own titles and, where marked, values read off the live page.
Our pipeline watches the full high-yield index. It does not watch the weakest tier at all (BAMLH0A3HYC is in no refresh list, no model, no tripwire). Pulled directly from FRED today:
Stress is arriving from the bottom of the credit stack up, exactly the pattern the tripwire board was built to catch, in the one tier nothing was watching.
The overwhelming majority are per-company pages (PE, P/S, dividend history, financial statement lines for every listed stock and fund). Those are single-name research tools, useful for Taslos-style stock work, not macro indicators. The macro/indicator subset is a few hundred pages, and most of them republish FRED, ICE (via FRED), Shiller, or World Bank data. Macrotrends' unique asset is narrow and specific: it kept the pre-2023 ICE spread history that FRED now truncates at the download layer.
| Page | Coverage | In our stack? | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| ICE BofA BB HY Spread (macrotrends.net/3101) | 1996-2026, daily | HY yes, BB no | Backtest gold for the FSM/CIS credit legs; live data identical via FRED. Spot-verified from the live page: 1.95% Dec 31, 1996; 2.02% Feb 28, 2007; 3.17% Aug 15, 2007; 13.80% Nov 20, 2008; low 1.50% Aug 28, 2026; 1.94% Oct 8, 2026 |
| ICE BofA BBB Corporate Spread (/3031) | 1996-2026, daily | IG index yes, BBB tier no | The weakest investment-grade tier, where downgrade risk concentrates. 0.95% Sep 17, 2026 vs our IG index 0.84%. Candidate tripwire (BBB widening leads fallen-angel waves) |
| ICE BofA US HY, full index (/3006) | 1996+ family | Yes (FRED, 3y window) | Same series we use; Macrotrends copy only adds pre-2023 history |
| CCC & Lower HY Spread + Rate pages | Exist (linked from BB page); range unconfirmed, family is 1996+ | No — the gap | Add as tripwires from FRED now (below); long history would let us grade thresholds later |
| 10Y Treasury (/2016), 1Y (/2492), 2Y (/3029), 30Y, Fed Funds (/2015, 1954+), 30Y mortgage, TED spread | 1954-2026 | Yes, all on FRED | Duplicates; Macrotrends itself sources these from the Fed |
| US Debt-to-GDP (global-metrics) | 1989-2023, annual, World Bank | Yes, better via Z.1 | Stale and annual; skip |
| S&P 500 annual returns (/2526) | 1927-2026 | Yes via Shiller | Duplicate |
| Global-metrics country pages (inflation, unemployment, GDP, rates) | Annual, World Bank | US covered better on FRED | Only useful for non-US work |
| Q Ratio | Not found on Macrotrends | Not in VFS; CMV's own Q page is broken | The standard live source is Advisor Perspectives/dshort: Q at 2.11 (Sep 2026), ~148% above its mean. Q is also computable from the Z.1 series our pipeline already pulls, if we ever want it in VFS/DRG |
Not found (searched): an index-level S&P 500 earnings-yield or dividend-yield page (multpl and Shiller already cover both), a Macrotrends market-cap-to-GDP page (search could not confirm the URL; our Z.1 Buffett leg is the same construction), Case-Shiller / M2 velocity / margin-debt pages (FRED and our FINRA splice cover all three).
route tried is blocked (direct fetch, text fetch, managed browser incl. manual clicks, archive.org, download subdomain). Remaining routes: a home-network browser session, or Macrotrends Premium export (their paid tier advertises data downloads).
truncated to ~3 years, which is all a tripwire needs. The long history is a backtest asset, not a monitoring asset.
CCC widening from its 6-month low (watch +150bp, trip +250bp; currently +348bp, would seed TRIPPED) and the CCC-minus-HY quality gap (watch 8.0pp, trip 9.0pp; currently 9.37pp, would seed TRIPPED). Add BAMLH0A3HYC to the daily refresh list.
on Oct 8, 2026, up from Macrotrends' 0.95% on Sep 17), watching for BBB widening materially faster than the IG index — the fallen-angel precursor. Cross-check from the same pull: FRED's BB OAS (BAMLH0A1HYBB) printed 1.94% on Oct 8, matching the Macrotrends BB page's live value exactly.
FSM/CIS HY-leg thresholds (0.50/0.25pp) against 2007 and 2015, the two episodes the current 3-year window cannot test. Revisit if a home-browser or Premium route opens.
More charts would not have meant more signal; the one real gap was a tier, not a site.
Prepared for Michael Davis, 2026-10-11. Values from FRED (pulled today) and from Macrotrends pages as cited; the CCC figures are FRED's, not Macrotrends'.
Research note by Michael Davis (Taslos). Research, not investment advice.
