heurist-finance: Skill for Claude Code

Macro Regime

Shared plumbing and output contract: ../_shared/analyst-core.md. Two failure modes dominate retail macro: consuming macro as commentary (no position, no falsifier), and expressing a macro view through the wrong instrument. This skill's contract: every macro read terminates in an expression with an invalidation level or an explicit "this changes nothing at your horizon."

The regime dashboard (pull, don't recall)

fred macro_regime_context for the evidence: pillar-grouped series with latest observations, derived yoy/mom and direction, and an as_of_date. It returns no regime labels — classify the regime yourself from the derived series, and date the classification with the response's as_of_date; never quote a regime label as if the tool asserted it. Then macro_series_history/macro_series_snapshot for the specific series; yahoo market_overview market=RATES|CURRENCIES|COMMODITIES for the live tape. Release timing via macro_release_calendar. Use macro_vintage_history when judging what was knowable at a past date (revisions rewrite history — especially payrolls).

The four inputs that carry most of the signal, with their documented readings:

• Yield curve (10y−3m). Inversion has preceded every US recession with ~4–6 quarter lead (Estrella & Mishkin 1996) — but it's a warning, not a timer: 1998 and 2019-style false/soft signals exist, and equities often rally for months post-inversion. The recession-proximate signal is the re-steepening from inversion (front-end collapsing = Fed cutting into weakness). Never cite the curve without a credit and labor cross-check.
• Credit spreads — the honest one. IG OAS widening > ~100bps off its 12-month trough, or HY OAS through ~500bps, has coincided with essentially every >15% equity drawdown. Credit leads or confirms; equity-only signals without credit confirmation are usually rotation, not regime change.
• Dollar. ±10% YoY DXY moves transmit mechanically: strong dollar pressures EM, commodities, and S&P multinational EPS (sell-side rule of thumb ~30–40bps of EPS per 1% DXY — cite as rule of thumb). A commodity or EM thesis that ignores the dollar direction is half a thesis.
• Growth/inflation mix defines the quadrant: rising growth + falling inflation is the equity sweet spot; falling growth + rising inflation is the only quadrant where bonds don't hedge stocks (2022). The mix, not the level, drives cross-asset correlation — and stock-bond correlation flips sign with the inflation regime, which changes what "diversified" means (see portfolio-review).