National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI)
More about the NFCI
The NFCI represents a common element taken from price, quantity, and survey evidence on broad financial conditions with a unique set of desirable features:
- Weekly index frequency
- Historical coverage of nearly 40 years
- Broad coverage of financial markets (traditional and more recently developed)
- Quarterly, monthly, and weekly variables with varied start and end dates
- Weights that reflect variables’ systemic and dynamic importance to the financial system
Like the Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index (CFNAI), the NFCI is a weighted average of a large number of variables (100 measures of financial activity) each expressed relative to their sample averages and scaled by their sample standard deviations. The ANFCI removes the variation in the individual indicators attributable to economic activity and inflation—as measured by the three-month moving average of the Chicago Fed’s NAI and three-month percent change in the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index—before computing the index.
