The Chicago Fed’s National Financial Conditions Index is a weighted average of 105 measures of U.S. money, debt and equity markets and of the traditional and shadow banking systems, scaled to a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one since 1971. Positive values mean financial conditions are tighter than average, and negative values mean they are looser. Its measures are also grouped into three subindexes, each scaled the same way: risk (volatility and funding risk in the financial sector), credit (credit conditions) and leverage (debt and equity measures).