Sideline Cash Ratio (Cash vs US Equity Market Value)
The sideline cash ratio divides total US cash balances — money-market fund assets plus commercial bank deposits — by the market value of all publicly traded US corporate equities, from the Federal Reserve's Z.1 and H.8 releases. It is the free, reproducible version of the Bloomberg "cash as a percent of S&P 500 market cap" chart; because the denominator here is the whole public equity market rather than the S&P 500 alone, the levels print lower, but the shape and the extremes are the same. The record low came in early 2000 at the dot-com peak; the record highs came in 1982 and early 2009 — the two great generational buying points.
Latest reading
As of January 2026, Sideline Cash (Cash ÷ equity market value) stands at 0.34 — up from 0.32 the prior reading. Read it as a slow contrarian valuation gauge: extremes matter, the middle does not. Very low readings (under ~0.39, the bottom decile) mean equities are enormous relative to the economy's cash buffer — 2000, 2021, and today. Very high readings (above ~0.83) have marked washed-out markets. One warning baked into the design: this is NOT "dry powder waiting to buy stocks." The cash pile in dollars almost never shrinks — the ratio falls because market cap grows, and in aggregate cash cannot "flow into" equities, since every buyer of a share hands their cash to a seller. A low ratio says valuations are stretched relative to liquidity; it says nothing about when that matters. Series history runs from 1973 to present.
Cash ÷ equity market value
- Vs full history
- 0.343rd pctile
- Total cash
- $27.28T
- US equity value
- $79.67T
Next release: Sep 10, 2026
Full history
Cash / equities ratio
Total cash pile
The numerator in dollars: total money-market fund assets plus commercial bank deposits. The cash pile almost never shrinks — the ratio falls because the market grows faster, not because cash is spent.
US equity market value
The denominator: the market value of all publicly traded US corporate equities from the Fed's Z.1 accounts — a broader (larger) base than the S&P 500's market cap alone.
Methodology & data
Sideline Cash is sourced from Fed via the Federal Reserve's FRED service (Fed Z.1 + H.8 via FRED (MMMFFAQ027S + DPSACBW027SBOG ÷ BOGZ1LM883164115Q), quarterly, 1973+). We pull the complete history, chart it on a quarterly basis, overlay SPY for context, and generate a dated plain-English reading from the latest release — with no smoothing or adjustment beyond what the chart legend states.
Every reading is stamped with its release date, last updated 2026-07-12. Maintained and reviewed by Yuriy Matso; see our methodology for the standards every series on the site is held to.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Sideline Cash Ratio (Cash vs US Equity Market Value)?
The sideline cash ratio divides total US cash balances — money-market fund assets plus commercial bank deposits — by the market value of all publicly traded US corporate equities, from the Federal Reserve's Z.1 and H.8 releases. It is the free, reproducible version of the Bloomberg "cash as a percent of S&P 500 market cap" chart; because the denominator here is the whole public equity market rather than the S&P 500 alone, the levels print lower, but the shape and the extremes are the same. The record low came in early 2000 at the dot-com peak; the record highs came in 1982 and early 2009 — the two great generational buying points.
How do you read Sideline Cash?
Read it as a slow contrarian valuation gauge: extremes matter, the middle does not. Very low readings (under ~0.39, the bottom decile) mean equities are enormous relative to the economy's cash buffer — 2000, 2021, and today. Very high readings (above ~0.83) have marked washed-out markets. One warning baked into the design: this is NOT "dry powder waiting to buy stocks." The cash pile in dollars almost never shrinks — the ratio falls because market cap grows, and in aggregate cash cannot "flow into" equities, since every buyer of a share hands their cash to a seller. A low ratio says valuations are stretched relative to liquidity; it says nothing about when that matters.
Where does the Sideline Cash data come from?
Fed Z.1 + H.8 via FRED (MMMFFAQ027S + DPSACBW027SBOG ÷ BOGZ1LM883164115Q), quarterly, 1973+. We chart the full history and publish a dated, plain-English reading with every release; the raw series is downloadable as CSV at /data/indicators/sideline-cash-ratio.csv.
How often is Sideline Cash updated?
Sideline Cash is a quarterly series from Fed, refreshed here as soon as a new release posts to FRED.