The Palanor Indices
The instruments Palanor builds to read what the singular series cannot.
Anyone can show you CPI. Anyone can show you the VIX. Palanor builds composites — transparently disclosed, weight-by-weight, with public-source components.
The Palanor Indices
Anyone can show you CPI. Anyone can show you the VIX. Palanor builds composites — transparently disclosed, weight-by-weight, with public-source components.
Growth mode vs defensive mode. The ratio of AI/capex mention frequency to buyback mention frequency, sentiment-weighted — measuring how the corpus is deploying capital, in one number 0–100.
The Capital Deployment Posture Index reads how the public corpus is allocating dollars across the cycle. When AI capex and growth-investment language dominates buyback language, the index rises — companies are deploying. When buyback language dominates, the index falls — companies are returning capital, often a signal that they don't see better internal uses for it. The number is multiplied by the public-sentiment component so that a high deployment posture during low confidence is dampened (real growth investment requires confidence to mean anything).
AI mentions today is the single largest growth-capex signal in S&P 500 discourse — every major operating company is making AI investment statements. Buybacks are the cleanest counter-signal — when a company is buying back its own stock at scale, it is signaling that it cannot redeploy capital at a better risk-adjusted return. The ratio of the two captures the deploy-vs-return decision the corpus is making at any given moment. Sentiment-weighting prevents the index from reading a low-confidence pivot to growth talk as a true growth-mode read.
Above 70 — strong deployment posture; the corpus is choosing growth. Between 40 and 70 — balanced; normal capex-to-buyback ratios. Below 40 — defensive posture; the corpus is returning capital. The index is most actionable as a regime indicator paired with credit spreads — when posture is deteriorating and spreads are widening, capital is being returned defensively rather than deployed.
Buybacks at scale signal that the board cannot find a better internal use for the dollar.
The index doesn't distinguish between productive and unproductive AI capex. Companies can over-invest in growth and still register high on this index. It's a regime indicator, not a quality indicator. Pair with capex-to-revenue ratios on the underlying components to separate the two reads.
Every component, every weight. The 30-day spark shows how the underlying series has moved; the transform column shows how it converts to a comparable scale before weighting. Direction indicates whether rising values raise or lower the index.
| Component | Source | Weight | Direction | Transform | 30d | 24h | 30d Δ | Now contributing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Mentions per Call (Discourse) | Palanor | 50% | positive | zscore_24m | ▲ 76.00 | ▲ 78.09 | +1.500 | |
| Buyback Mentions per Call (Discourse) | Palanor | 30% | negative | zscore_24m |
Numen for the public read:
Palanor reads capital deployment posture as elevated at 80.1 of 100 — well above its 24-month neutral. The composite is leaning into the regime, not against it.
24-month history of this index. The composite is recomputed daily; values are stored with timestamps.
Y-axis auto-zoomed · data clusters tightly
| # | Computed at | Value | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40 | 7/11/2026, 8:45:42 AM | 80.0919 | -0.0669 |
| 39 | 7/10/2026, 8:45:20 AM | 80.1588 | -0.0681 |
| 38 | 7/9/2026, 8:46:00 AM | 80.2269 | -0.0695 |
| 37 | 7/8/2026, 8:45:59 AM | 80.2964 | -0.0708 |
| 36 | 7/7/2026, 8:46:00 AM | 80.3672 | -0.0721 |
| 35 | 7/6/2026, 8:46:00 AM | 80.4392 | -0.0732 |
| 34 | 7/5/2026, 8:46:00 AM | 80.5125 | -0.0747 |
| 33 | 7/4/2026, 8:46:00 AM | 80.5871 | -0.0762 |
| 32 | 7/3/2026, 8:46:00 AM | 80.6633 | -0.0778 |
| 31 | 7/2/2026, 8:46:00 AM | 80.7411 | -0.0796 |
| 30 | 7/1/2026, 8:45:41 AM | 80.8207 | -0.0814 |
| 29 | 6/30/2026, 8:45:43 AM | 80.9021 | -0.0835 |
| 28 | 6/29/2026, 8:45:57 AM | 80.9857 | -0.0848 |
| 27 | 6/28/2026, 8:45:58 AM | 81.0705 | -0.0870 |
| 26 | 6/27/2026, 8:45:56 AM | 81.1575 | -0.0894 |
| 25 | 6/26/2026, 8:45:56 AM | 81.2469 | -0.0920 |
| 24 | 6/25/2026, 8:45:36 AM | 81.3389 | -0.0947 |
| 23 | 6/24/2026, 8:45:36 AM | 81.4336 | -0.0976 |
| 22 | 6/23/2026, 8:45:10 AM | 81.5312 | -0.1009 |
| 21 | 6/22/2026, 8:45:11 AM | 81.6321 | -0.1055 |
| 20 | 6/21/2026, 8:45:13 AM | 81.7377 | -0.1255 |
| 19 | 6/20/2026, 8:45:18 AM | 81.8631 | -0.0835 |
| 18 | 6/19/2026, 8:45:18 AM | 81.9466 | -0.0852 |
| 17 | 6/18/2026, 8:45:38 AM | 82.0318 | -0.0871 |
| 16 | 6/17/2026, 8:45:29 AM | 82.1189 | -0.0888 |
| 15 | 6/16/2026, 8:45:15 AM | 82.2077 | -0.0909 |
| 14 | 6/15/2026, 8:45:16 AM | 82.2986 | -0.0932 |
| 13 | 6/14/2026, 8:45:47 AM | 82.3918 | -0.0973 |
| 12 | 6/13/2026, 8:45:14 AM | 82.4891 | -0.1000 |
| 11 | 6/12/2026, 8:45:23 AM | 82.5890 | -0.1028 |
| 10 | 6/11/2026, 8:45:29 AM | 82.6919 | -0.1059 |
| 9 | 6/10/2026, 8:45:45 AM | 82.7977 | -0.2473 |
| 8 | 6/9/2026, 8:45:57 AM | 83.0450 | -0.1310 |
| 7 | 6/8/2026, 10:53:10 PM | 83.1760 | 0.0000 |
| 6 | 6/8/2026, 8:45:40 AM | 83.1760 | -0.1370 |
| 5 | 6/7/2026, 8:45:36 AM | 83.3130 | +0.0686 |
| 4 | 6/6/2026, 8:45:35 AM | 83.2445 | +0.5333 |
| 3 | 6/5/2026, 8:45:58 AM | 82.7112 | +0.5616 |
| 2 | 6/4/2026, 7:12:16 PM | 82.1496 | 0.0000 |
| 1 | 6/4/2026, 4:21:29 PM | 82.1496 | — |
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/https://www.atlantafed.org/researchhttps://www.clevelandfed.org/our-research/indicators-and-datahttps://data.oecd.org/leadind/consumer-confidence-index-cci.htmhttps://www.cnn.com/markets/fear-and-greedhttps://trends.google.com/Stewards see Palanor Indices tuned to their mandate.
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| ▼ 4.14 |
| ▲ 1.20 |
| -0.463 |
| Public Sentiment (Discourse) | Palanor | 20% | positive | level | ▲ 0.075 | ▲ 0.113 | +0.355 |