United States

The US entered this cycle with a labour market that looked resilient on the headline rate and progressively less so underneath it. U6 has risen for six consecutive cycles while U3 has held near 4.1% — the divergence, rather than either level, is what the record has been tracking.

Services activity has decelerated steadily without breaking: ISM services has printed above 54 for twenty-two consecutive cycles, but the trend across the last twelve is unambiguously down. Nothing in the series yet meets the three-consecutive-months-below-48 condition that would mark a services contraction.

The material change this cycle is on the fiscal and trade side. Tariff protection has now been imposed, struck down, and re-imposed under a different statutory basis three times in six months. The record treats the instability of the legal basis as the risk factor, distinct from the level of the tariff itself.

Beneath continued equity strength, the financing mix of the AI buildout has shifted toward debt. That converts what has been read as an equity valuation question into a credit question, and it is the reason the credit channel now carries four tracked indicators rather than three.