// retail leverage monitor
Retail Leverage
Margin financing, sidelined cash and forced liquidations across the US, Korea and China stock markets, from official daily and monthly statistics.
Leverage Index81.1Extreme
0-100 · higher = less healthyComposite of trailing 10-year percentiles: 12-month margin-debt growth (30%), margin growth minus S&P 500 return over 1 year (30%), margin debt normalized by the index (25%), debt/free-credit level (15%). Monthly data, backtested 1999-2026: the 2000 and 2007 tops read 90+.
Margin Debt
$1.42T
-5.65% vs prev month
Debt / Free Credit
335.49%
10y percentile 99%
Free Credit Balances
$422.44B
-4.18% vs prev month
Monthly Change
-$84.85B
2026-07
Margin balance vs leverage ratio
Monthly change in margin debt
Backtest: known tops and bottoms
The live formula, recomputed over full history (1999-2026, data through 2026-07), checked against major market tops, bottoms and the full sample. Readings are informative at the extremes; this is a fragility gauge, not a timing signal.
Rank corr vs fwd 12m return
-0.223
Avg fwd 12m when reading < 25
+12.5%
Avg fwd 12m when reading > 75
-1.3%
| Market top | Max decline after | Type | Reading at top | Peak prior 6m | First 75+ warning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000-08 | -25% | Leverage-driven | 78.8 | 100.0 | ~15mo before |
| 2007-10 | -38% | Leverage-driven | 91.2 | 98.2 | ~11mo before |
| 2020-02 | -20% | Exogenous shock | 20.7 | 23.8 | -- |
| 2021-12 | -25% | Leverage-driven | 42.7 | 76.3 | ~12mo before |
Readings at major bottoms: 2002-10 → 59.6 · 2009-02 → 35.5 · 2020-03 → 13.9 · 2022-10 → 12.3
- The signal runs early: first 75+ warnings led tops by 2-18 months, and markets often kept rising in between.
- Roughly one in four high-reading episodes was not followed by a major drawdown.
- By design it stays silent on non-leverage declines and exogenous shocks; liquidation stress is tracked separately.
- Small sample: only a handful of full cycles per market, and weights were chosen coarsely to limit overfitting.
Source: FINRA customer margin balances · monthlyData as of 2026-07Public market statistics. Not investment advice.