Six layers, in the order things usually break

Collateral cracks first, then the shakiest borrowers, then the loans and the funds holding them. Pick a signal to see the evidence and where it came from. One red light doesn't mean much. Several layers lighting up at once does.

View

Trend (easing, steady, worsening) is how far a signal's score moved since the last check: 5 points or more either way counts. Changed compares its status with the last check. ·

Market tape

A year of daily closes for 18 names. Each line is drawn against its own one-year high, so they all share one scale. Neoclouds are the canary in the coal mine. The spenders are who pays them, the BDCs hold the loans, and the managers run the funds.

Credit gauges

The plumbing, straight from the Fed's own data. Spreads are what borrowers pay over Treasurys, so wider means lenders are getting nervous. The dashed lines are where we'd call it watch and flashing.

Filings and fund books

What the lenders and borrowers have told the SEC. These come straight from EDGAR, so nothing here is secondhand.

BDC book check

BDC	Price	Book value	Price vs book	PIK share

SEC red flags

Withdrawal windows

Power and the grid

A data center is only worth what it can plug in. These are the queues and auctions that decide when the power shows up, and every month it doesn't is a month a borrower pays interest on an empty building.

Hookups and capacity

History, day by day

One column per daily check. A row that turns red and stays red is a layer giving way. Several rows turning red together is the thing to worry about.

Layer status by check

C CalmW WatchF Flashing Check not run yet

Events

The moments behind the readings, newest first.

Event log

Date	Layer	What happened	Source

Help

How the score works, what the jargon means, and what this page isn't. Any term used in a reading links straight here from its evidence window.

How to read this

How the score works

Every signal gets a score from 0 to 100. Claude grades the news each morning on five steps: 0, 25, 50, 75 or 100.
Where there's hard data (prices, spreads, bank lending), each measure is scored against its own last few years, the way CNN's Fear & Greed index works: a normal day scores 0, a reading worse than 90% of its history scores 80. The data then counts for more than the news in the signal's score.
Under 40 is calm, 40 to 74 is watch, and 75 or more is flashing. A signal flashes when its evidence crosses a set line, like CoreWeave's CDS going above 1,000bp or several fund managers gating withdrawals at once.
Each layer averages its signals: 75 or higher is flashing, 37.5 or higher is watch.
The stress index averages the six layers on a 0 to 100 scale, split into five bands: quiet, stirring, elevated, warning, panic. The pixel field behind it rises with the number.
The chain reaction is the alarm that really matters. Its title turns yellow when one link is missing, and red when collateral, the weakest borrowers and the funds are all flashing at once.
Trend is how far a signal's score moved since the last check: up 5 or more is worsening, down 5 or more is easing. Changed is different: it just compares today's status with the last check.
A reading is marked old tag when its evidence is more than 14 days older than the latest check. Old readings still count toward the index. If more than a day goes by without a check, the page flags it as overdue.
Prices are daily closes, and each change is against five trading days earlier.
Gauges, filings and book values aren't scored into the index yet. They're the raw evidence Claude reads when it judges the signals each morning.

What it isn't

This isn't a timing tool, and it isn't financial advice. The readings are judgment calls based on public reporting, some of it secondhand or unconfirmed. Every one links to its source and date so you can check for yourself.

Terms

Neocloud: A company that rents out AI computing power, often on borrowed money (CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN).
BDC: Business development company: a fund that lends to private companies. Listed BDCs trade on exchanges; non-traded ones limit withdrawals.
NAV: Net asset value: what a fund says its loans are worth.
PIK: Payment in kind: a borrower pays interest with more debt instead of cash.
Amend and extend: A lender pushes back a deadline or loosens terms instead of calling a default.
CDS: Credit default swap: insurance against a company defaulting. Its price is quoted in basis points (bp); 100bp is 1% a year.
Redemption gate: A fund capping how much investors can withdraw in a quarter.
10-Q, 10-K: The quarterly and annual reports US companies file with the SEC. A late one is a warning sign.
Back-leverage: A loan a bank makes to a private credit fund, secured on the fund's own loans.
Shadow default: A borrower that avoids a recorded default only because its lender amended the loan.
Mark, at cost: The value a fund puts on a loan. "97.6% of cost" means it is carried near what was lent, whatever similar debt trades at.
Hyperscaler: One of the giant cloud companies (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Oracle) that lease most data center capacity.
Spread: The extra yield a borrower pays over US Treasurys. 340bp means 3.4 percentage points more a year.
Tender offer: How a non-traded BDC lets investors cash out: once a quarter it offers to buy back a slice of its shares, usually capped at 5%.
Full-cost floor: What an hour of GPU rent has to earn to pay off the chip, its power and its data center space over a normal life. Rent below it loses money.
Cash floor: Just the power, space and running costs of an hour. Owners usually keep renting down to here, since the chip is already bought.
Opportunity-cost floor: The least an owner will rent for, given the next best use of the chip, like selling it or running their own work on it.
Collateral cushion: GPU rent divided by the full-cost floor. Above 1×, the chips backing a loan earn their keep; below 1×, they earn less than they cost.
Performance parity: Comparing chips by price per unit of work, like dollars per petaflop-hour, so an older chip and a newer one can be weighed fairly.
Risk-neutral default odds: The default odds a CDS price implies. They include what investors charge for taking the risk, so they run higher than real-world odds.
Basis: The gap between two prices for the same thing, like two indexes' H100 rents, or a futures price and today's rent.

Where the data comes from

Source	What we take	How often
SEC EDGAR	8-K red flags (officer exits, auditor changes, restatement warnings, debt accelerations), late-filing notices, BDC tender offers, and book value and PIK income from BDC quarterly reports	Daily
OFR (US Treasury)	The OFR Financial Stress Index and its credit part	Daily, two days behind
Federal Reserve Board	The corporate bond (GZ) spread, the excess bond premium and its recession odds	Monthly
FRED (St. Louis Fed)	The Fed's loan officer survey and H.8 bank loans to nonbanks	Weekly or quarterly, as published
Yahoo Finance	Daily closes for the 18 tape names and the 10 BDCs in the book check	Daily
ERCOT, PJM, Berkeley Lab	Large-load hookup queues, capacity auction results, the national interconnection queue (via each grid row's linked source)	When they publish, checked weekly
News and filings	The 17 signal readings and the event log. Claude reads them every morning and links each reading to its source	Daily

Glitch in the Credit

The chain reaction

Stress index