Coherence Score

The Coherence Score is a daily metric from the Atlas Math Engine at Given Analytics that measures how strongly leading and lagging macroeconomic indicators agree with each other. It is expressed on a 0-100 scale, where higher values indicate stronger alignment between indicators that move first and indicators that confirm later. The score is computed every trading day using 21 economic series drawn from the Federal Reserve.

Short definition

The Coherence Score answers one question every morning:

Are the indicators that usually move first agreeing with the indicators that usually confirm later?

• When they agree, the current macro regime is coherent.
• When they disagree, a regime transition may be forming.

To make this easy to interpret, the Coherence Score is grouped into three observational bands:

• 70-100: ALIGNED — leading and lagging indicators are in strong agreement. The regime is well confirmed by the math.
• 40-69: WATCHING — moderate agreement. A transition is possible; the math is flagging meaningful disagreement.
• 0-39: DIVERGING — leading and lagging indicators are pulling apart. Historically, these are the conditions in which regime transitions tend to occur.

The Coherence Score is an observation, not a prediction. It describes what the math observed across 21 economic series this morning. Past conditions are not predictions of future conditions.

Why Coherence Score matters

Most macro commentary treats "the economy" as a single thing moving in a single direction: "the economy is strong," "the economy is slowing," "inflation is rising." Those statements hide the fact that different indicators often tell different stories.

• Leading indicators — such as yield curves, credit spreads, breakeven inflation expectations, and consumer sentiment surveys — tend to move early, reacting to conditions that have not yet appeared in official data.
• Lagging indicators — such as CPI, PCE, payrolls, and industrial production — move later, confirming or disconfirming what the leading indicators suggested weeks or months earlier.

When these two groups agree, the regime is real and internally consistent. When they disagree, something is changing under the surface. The Coherence Score measures that agreement, in real time, every trading day, using a consistent mathematical method that does not depend on pundit narratives.

For a serious individual investor, the Coherence Score provides a rare, single number that tells you whether the current environment is internally consistent or internally divided. That distinction often separates regimes that tend to persist from regimes that tend to flip.

How Given Analytics computes Coherence Score

The Atlas Math Engine reads the macro environment along two axes: growth and inflation. For each axis, it scores leading and lagging indicators independently using rate-of-change momentum across a fixed set of series. The divergence between the leading and lagging scores — axis by axis and combined — becomes the Coherence Score.

Growth axis

On the growth axis, Atlas compares:

• Leading-indicator momentum — yield curve behavior, jobless claims, sentiment surveys, weekly economic index readings.
• Lagging-indicator momentum — payrolls, industrial production, retail sales, housing starts.

Divergence here means the growth story is shifting.

Inflation axis

On the inflation axis, Atlas compares:

• Leading-indicator momentum — breakeven inflation expectations, TIPS-implied real rates, commodity prices, oil.
• Lagging-indicator momentum — core CPI, core PCE, headline CPI and PCE, producer prices.

Divergence here means the inflation story is shifting.

When both axes show strong leading-versus-lagging agreement, the Coherence Score prints high (ALIGNED). When either axis shows meaningful divergence, the score moves into WATCHING or DIVERGING.

Calibration and historical behavior

The Coherence Score was calibrated across 152 historical monthly observations from 2005 through 2026, including:

• The Global Financial Crisis
• The 2020 pandemic shock
• The 2021-2022 inflation cycle
• The 2023 disinflation
• The current environment

Calibration was tuned so that:

• Truly coherent regimes score above 70 (ALIGNED).
• Genuinely divided conditions score below 40 (DIVERGING).
• Most normal days fall between 40 and 69 (WATCHING).

Illustrative historical readings:

• Lehman Brothers collapse, September 2008: Coherence Score = 0 (DIVERGING).
• COVID shock, March 2020: Coherence Score = 0 (DIVERGING).
• Peak inflation, June 2022: Coherence Score = 0 (DIVERGING).
• Disinflation, June 2023: Coherence Score = 82 (ALIGNED).

These are observed values at those times. The Coherence Score does not claim to have predicted those events in advance; it describes how internally aligned the macro data was during those periods.

Coherence Score vs. Confirmation Score

Given Analytics publishes two distinct agreement metrics every morning, and they measure different things:

• Confirmation Score — counts how many of the 21 underlying economic series align with the current macro regime classification. It is a count metric, expressed as a number out of 21 (for example, 18/21).
• Coherence Score — measures the magnitude and direction of leading-versus-lagging agreement across the growth and inflation axes, calibrated from 0 to 100.

Because they measure different aspects of agreement, you can see meaningful combinations:

High Confirmation Score + low Coherence Score
Most series agree with the regime label, but leading and lagging structures are diverging. The current regime is widely supported, but internal timing is conflicted — a transition may be forming.

Low Confirmation Score + high Coherence Score
Fewer series agree with the regime label, but the ones that matter are aligned on the same side (for example, leading indicators shifting together). That can also mark important turning points.

Reading both metrics together tells you more about regime quality than reading either alone. The Morning Brief and member dashboard publish both every weekday.

Why the Coherence Score is proprietary

The concept of measuring leading-lagging agreement is not new. Economists have separated leading, coincident, and lagging indicators for decades.

What is proprietary to Given Analytics is the specific implementation of the Coherence Score:

• Which 21 series are used and how they are weighted.
• How rate-of-change momentum is computed for each series.
• How leading versus lagging is defined within each axis.
• How the divergence calculations and calibration constants were derived from 152 historical dates.

Subscribers see the Coherence Score output and its history. The underlying formula remains private, in the same way quantitative funds publish outputs without revealing their internal models.

Historical context

The idea that some indicators move first and others confirm later traces back to work by Arthur Burns and Wesley Mitchell at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which distinguished leading, coincident, and lagging indicators over the business cycle.

NBER's framework was observational and qualitative. Modern implementations, including the Coherence Score, make that framework quantitative:

• Instead of simply labeling indicators as "leading" or "lagging," the math measures how much they actually lead or lag using rate-of-change behavior.
• It then measures how much those two groups agree or disagree at a given point in time.

The Coherence Score does not attempt to reproduce NBER's business-cycle dating. The NBER dates recessions after the fact. The Coherence Score publishes daily observations of leading-lagging agreement in real time, without labeling or predicting recessions.

How members use Coherence Score

Members of Given Analytics see the Coherence Score:

• On each daily brief.
• On the live Atlas dashboard.
• In the regime history feed, which shows how coherence has behaved over weeks, months, and years.

Key points for use:

• A high Coherence Score does not guarantee that the current regime will persist; it means the math sees no internal disagreement right now.
• A low Coherence Score does not guarantee that a regime transition is imminent; it means the math sees significant internal disagreement.

Coherence is an input to judgment, not a substitute for it. Given Analytics does not issue trade recommendations, buy or sell signals, or price targets based on the Coherence Score. The metric is educational and informational only, consistent with the publisher's exclusion under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 §202(a)(11)(D).

Related terms

• Confirmation Score — count of series aligned with the current regime.
• Atlas Math Engine — proprietary engine that produces the Coherence Score and related metrics.
• Regime Coherence — state of a macro regime when leading and lagging indicators agree.
• Rate-of-Change Momentum — underlying method for scoring individual series.
• Macro Regime — four-quadrant classification system (Expansion, Acceleration, Stagflation, Contraction) that Coherence and Confirmation support.

How to cite

Data and methodology on this page are produced by the Given Analytics Atlas Math Engine, calibrated across 152 historical monthly observations from 2005 through 2026. Please attribute references to the "Coherence Score" to Given Analytics. Methodology remains proprietary. Historical observations and current readings are educational only and do not constitute investment advice.

Related Terms

• Coherence Score
• Confirmation Score
• Macro Regime
• Mathematical Condition
• Regime Coherence
• Four Layer Alignment