Economy vs Markets

Do equities actually track economic fundamentals?

A recurring question: how tightly is the stock market coupled to economic growth? This page puts the two side-by-side, looks at correlations, and lets you drill into S&P 500 sector performance by year.

Annual GDP growth vs S&P 500 return

Two very different pictures in the same window — equity returns are far more volatile than GDP.

How correlated are they, really?

Each point is a year. Hover to see the year label. The 2020 COVID year and the 2022 inflation shock pull the relationship around quite a bit.

S&P 500 sector returns — drill by decade → year → sector

Treemap with native drill-down. Click a decade tile to zoom into its years; click a year tile to see its sector-by-sector return breakdown. Sector tile size is scaled by absolute return; color shows sign (green = positive, red = negative).

Cross-indicator heatmap

Correlations across indicators, 2001–2025. Click a cell for the exact value.