You are reading Slack Tide, a monthly letter that reads the Macro Compass board: a public snapshot of a personal macro monitoring practice, tracked against explicit thresholds. The name is a boater's term for the moment the tide turns. Each issue reports what moved, what did not, and what is scheduled to move next. This is the first one.

The board at a glance

This issue reads the snapshot dated 2026-08-03, the board's latest. Twenty-three gauges in seven trend groups: 2 near-signal, 2 approaching, 1 inverted, 9 quiet, 9 context (each state is defined in the board's about block).

What's live

Curve re-steepening (near-signal). The 3m10y spread last inverted in October 2025 and now sits at +0.79%. Re-steepening after inversion is the historical recession-imminent pattern, but the board grades it valid only with corroboration, and the designated confirmer is quiet: the Sahm rule reads 0.07, falling.

Deficit vs. unemployment (near-signal). The deficit is running 5.6 to 5.8% of GDP with unemployment at 4.2%. The threshold is a deficit above 6% with unemployment below 5%, the board's definition of a fiscal-dominance regime. Close, not crossed.

Productivity (approaching). Q1-26 printed +2.80%, the first quarter above the 2.5% bar; the 4-quarter average sits at 2.46%. The escape-path clock starts only when the average crosses.

Foreign official Treasury share (approaching). About 12.5% of the Treasury market as of May, versus roughly 13.6% a year earlier, with the dollar level flat year over year: a share that falls because the market grows faster than official holdings.

Manufacturing construction (inverted). $172.7B SAAR, down 21.4% year over year, five straight declines. The board calls this row the reshoring fact on the ground; its state chip reads inverted, the board's label for moving against expectation.

The estimate meters

Three groups carry gray, tilde-marked meters in place of the measured group-level gauge (the rows beneath them stay measured): dollar system at ~stirring, demographics & generational turnover at ~nearing, and trade & reshoring at ~nearing (that read is the policy leg; the buildout leg reads cooler and is tracked separately). These are audited judgments, not measurements: a considered guess with a paper trail, formed across the whole practice and revisited quarterly. The board's about block explains the distinction.

The quiet gauges

Nine gauges sit at not crossed, and that is a reading, not an absence. The 10-year real yield is +2.47%, so the repression gauge reads not operating. Fed swap lines hold $132M, de minimis. July's 10-year and 30-year auctions both stopped through. Core goods CPI is +0.79% year over year. When the board is quiet, this letter will say quiet.

Base rates

The expansion is 76 months old, longer than 8 of 12 postwar expansions and about 1.5x the postwar median. The NY Fed's term-spread model reads roughly 20% at one significant figure for July 2027, its twelve-month-ahead probability target. Priors inform context, never triggers.

On the calendar

• Aug 26: GDP Q2 second estimate + July PCE (BEA)
• Sep 3: Productivity & Costs, Q2 revised (BLS)
• Sep 4: Employment Situation, August (BLS)
• Sep 11: CPI, August (BLS)

The next issue follows the board's monthly refresh in early September; whatever has landed by then is in it, and the rest rolls into October's reading.

What this letter is

One email a month, sent shortly after the board refreshes: what moved, what did not, what is scheduled next. This first issue is an off-cycle launch note and a baseline reading; the monthly rhythm, and the moved-or-not report against the prior issue, starts with September's. The full board, with thresholds, sparklines, sources, and the chip legend, lives at craigstoller.com/macro. The subscribe form lives there too, for archive readers and forwards alike.

Everything here is general information and personal research, not investment advice.