Methodology
Based on Signum's Hormuz TACO Index ("weighted z-score from 7-Mar baseline"): each variable is converted to a z-score against its level at the fixed March 7, 2026 baseline (last prior session), using the standard deviation of the 60 trading days before the baseline, oriented so that a positive value means pressure on the White House:
- Brent — rising crude adds pressure (inflation, gas prices).
- US 10-year Treasury — rising yields add pressure (financing costs).
- S&P 500 — a falling market adds pressure (sign inverted).
- Strait of Hormuz transits — falling traffic adds pressure (sign inverted). Two sources are combined, always favoring the freshest data: the public Lloyd's List Intelligence monitor (daily, up to date) and IMF PortWatch (IMF + Oxford, long history and fallback; updates weekly). Where both overlap, Lloyd's wins; PortWatch is rescaled to comparable units using the median ratio over the common period. The series is smoothed with a 7-day moving average.
The index is the weighted sum of the z-scores. Signum does not publish its weights, so they were fitted by least squares against the seven annotated points on its public chart (mean error ~0.35 σ): Brent 0.52 · 10-year 0.22 · S&P 500 0.05 · Hormuz 1.13. If one Hormuz source fails the other is used; if both fail, the index continues with the market components. Data refreshes every weekday after the Wall Street close via GitHub Actions (Stooq, with Yahoo Finance backup).