The Repricing of Locality

The 1991–2020 globalization regime priced one oil price, one reserve currency, one security umbrella, one set of access rules, and a build-out of compute that anyone could buy into. Every pillar of that arrangement is now being renegotiated at the same time. The Cycle isn't a Repricing axis itself — it's the precondition that tells you whether a generic expansion is still running underneath. This page walks the argument through the seven Repricing axes and closes with the composite read. Each section is the argument; the live institutional charts live on the linked pillar pages.

Cycle overlay — the precondition

Is the generic expansion still running?

Every Repricing call lands inside one prior question: is the cycle still on. The Business Cycle Index is a 61-indicator dynamic factor model that compresses the broad US business cycle into one composite score and a phase label (EARLY CYCLE / EXPANSION / LATE CYCLE / RECESSION). When the factor reads positive and momentum is intact, risk-on is the baseline and Repricing expressions carry normally. When it rolls over, composite risk rises and positions tighten. Cycle isn't a Repricing axis — it's the ambient condition every pillar's signal has to be read against.

→ See the live BCI factor and phase classifier on the BCI · Cycle index.

Pillar 1 — Energy

Geography is back as alpha.

Crude is no longer one global price. The Brent–WTI spread — the cleanest read of "where the molecule sits" — has whipped a $20 range in 30 days against a 5-year average of $3. Pipeline geography, refinery access, and sanctions geometry now matter more than the headline barrel.

→ See the live Energy composite stress + Brent-WTI breakdown on the Energy index.

Pillar 2 — Reserves

Gold has two books.

ETFs trade macro. Central banks accumulate. Same asset, two regimes. Since 2022, official-sector gold purchases have run at roughly twice the prior-decade pace — a cumulative reweighting of reserves that doesn't show up in the daily price tape.

→ See the live GAI composite + WGC central-bank gold demand on the Reserves index.

Pillar 3 — Dollar System

The dollar isn't weakening. It's being reallocated — from official rails to political discretion.

The Fiscal Dominance Index — debt service trajectory, term-structure pressure, refi wedge — sits in Fiscal Dominance Acute territory. The dollar's share of global reserves is broadly stable; what's changing is who controls the rails the dollar moves on.

→ See the live FDI + sovereign-vs-private TIC split on the Dollar System index.

Pillar 4 — Security

Regimes don't clear in a session.

The Caldara–Iacoviello Geopolitical Risk Index just printed its 8th-highest monthly reading since 1985 — sitting alongside the Gulf War, 9/11, and the Iraq invasion. Geopolitical risk doesn't mean-revert in weeks; the regime changes the option set for years.

→ See the live Defense vs Net Interest gap + ITA/SPX read on the Security index.

Pillar 5 — Money

Stablecoins are a top-15 sovereign holder of US debt.

Tether and Circle's combined Treasury holdings now exceed those of India, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia. The dollar's reach is expanding through private rails the official sector doesn't operate. The unit of account is the same; the issuance and clearing surface is not.

→ See the live stablecoin issuers vs sovereign UST holders on the Money index.

Pillar 6 — Food

Calories trade like crude now.

The same specific-access logic that prices crude regionally also prices the bread and the input upstream of it. Wheat geography (Russia/Ukraine on one side of the line, Egypt/Tunisia on the other), fertilizer geography (Belarus potash, Moroccan phosphate), edible oils (Indonesian palm, Ukrainian sunflower) — all repriced by the same multi-polar arrangement that repriced the barrel. The Food Regime Index compresses an 8-component agricultural pulse into a composite z-score and uses train-only OLS to nowcast the IMF Food Price Index three months forward (in-sample corr +0.68, both halves stable). The wheat-importer EM cohort sits closest to the breakeven; this pillar is the input-layer expression of the same Repricing.

→ See the live food composite + 3m forward CPI nowcast on the Food index.

Pillar 7 — AI / Compute

Compute is the new oil — and like oil, it's repricing by geography.

The 1991–2020 internet was a generic-access utility: anyone could rent compute, anywhere, from anyone. The 2024+ AI build-out is the opposite — an unprecedented capex cycle concentrating into a handful of hyperscalers, a handful of fabs, a handful of grids, and an export-controlled boundary that decides which sovereigns get to compute and at what tier. Capex, concentration, power draw, research throughput, data-center real estate, labor — six sub-pulses that compose into one regime read. The pillar is the input-layer expression of the same Repricing logic playing out in energy and food: the global commons fragmenting into specific-access tiers.

→ See the live Compute Pulse + sub-pulse breakdown on the AI / Compute index.

Composite

The regime is already here.

The Geopolitical Alpha Index composites the cross-pillar signal into a single reading and hasn't read this high since 2003. Past readings of comparable magnitude — Gulf War, 9/11, Iraq aftermath — were each followed by multi-year regime moves in cross-asset positioning. The composite read this cycle: Repricing axes co-firing, Cycle factor not yet rolled over. The Repricing of Locality expresses across the non-cycle axes while the risk-on baseline holds. When Cycle rolls, the composite sharpens.

→ See the composite on the Reserves index · See the cross-pillar regime hub on the dashboard.