US Corporate Equities to M2 Ratio: Equity Market Value Divided by the Money Supply, Quarterly Since 1959

The US corporate equities to M2 ratio divides the market value of the shares issued by US nonfinancial corporations by the M2 money stock: it compares the value of US equities with the money held by the public, without relying on any stock index. It is an Eco3min composite built from two Federal Reserve series retrieved from FRED, the Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1) for equity value and the H.6 release for M2. The formula is equities divided by M2, both in billions of dollars, so a reading of 3.0 means US nonfinancial corporate equities are worth three times the M2 money stock. The quarterly corporate equities to M2 ratio runs from Q1 1959 to Q2 2026, 270 observations, and is recomputed after each Z.1 release.

Dataset: US Corporate Equities to M2 Ratio (1959–2026) · Updated 2026-04-01

Data provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy or timeliness. Check any figure against the primary source cited on this page before using it. Terms: legal notice.

Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1) and H.6 Money Stock Measures, via FRED · ratio: Eco3min calculation

Macro Takeaway

Construction & Components

The composite measures how many dollars of corporate equity exist for each dollar of M2. Both legs come from the Federal Reserve and are in the public domain, so the series does not depend on the methodology or the licence of an index provider.

Formula:

Corporate equities to M2 = NCBEILQ027S / M2SL
  NCBEILQ027S: market value of nonfinancial corporate equities, USD billions (Z.1)
  M2SL:        M2 money stock, seasonally adjusted, USD billions (H.6), last month of the quarter

Components:

• Market value of nonfinancial corporate equities: NCBEILQ027S, Federal Reserve Z.1, table B.103 (Nonfinancial Corporate Business; Corporate Equities; Liability, Level): quarterly, published in millions of dollars and converted to billions. It covers listed and closely held corporations and excludes financial corporations such as banks, insurers and funds. Numerator.
• M2 money stock: M2SL, Federal Reserve H.6 release: monthly, seasonally adjusted, billions of dollars. Currency, deposits and retail money market funds. Denominator.

Frequency reconciliation: Z.1 levels are quarter-end stocks; M2SL is a monthly average. Eco3min takes the M2 value of the last month of each quarter (the June value for Q2), the reading closest to the Z.1 valuation date, rather than a quarterly average of M2, which would set a point-in-time numerator against a three-month mean. Each quarter is dated by its first day, the FRED convention: 2026-04-01 is Q2 2026.

Coverage: Q1 1959 to Q2 2026, 270 quarters. The start is set by M2SL, which begins in January 1959; the Z.1 equity series starts earlier.

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns.

Column names match the CSV headers exactly.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full US corporate equities to M2 ratio dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.

Data provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy or timeliness. Check any figure against the primary source cited on this page before using it. Terms: legal notice.

Source FRED Series Used for This Composite

Both components are published by the Federal Reserve and distributed by FRED:

• NCBEILQ027S, nonfinancial corporate business, corporate equities, liability, level: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NCBEILQ027S
• M2SL, M2 money stock: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

Direct CSV Access: Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-corporate-equities-to-m2.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-corporate-equities-to-m2.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(df.head())
print(df.describe())

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-corporate-equities-to-m2.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

head(df)
summary(df)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL, with no download or API key required.

Methodology

The dataset is recomputed by an Eco3min pipeline that pulls NCBEILQ027S and M2SL from the FRED API, converts the Z.1 series from millions to billions of dollars, keeps the M2 value of the last month of each quarter and divides the two according to the formula above. The pipeline runs Monday to Saturday and rewrites the whole file on each run.

Z.1 is published quarterly, about ten weeks after the end of the quarter: Q2 2026 came out on 11 September 2026, and the Federal Reserve has scheduled the next release for 10 December 2026. Because each run rebuilds the full series from FRED rather than appending the latest quarter, a revision to either input reaches every affected quarter of the file.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

Latency is set by the Z.1 release, which follows the end of each quarter by roughly ten weeks; M2SL is monthly and arrives within about four weeks. The composite therefore cannot be fresher than the latest Z.1 quarter.

Z.1 levels are revised at each release, sometimes several years back, as the Federal Reserve incorporates new source data; M2 is revised with annual benchmark and seasonal-factor updates. Both kinds of revision change past values of the ratio, and Eco3min replaces the entire CSV on each run.

The numerator is a national-accounts measure, not a market capitalisation: it includes closely held corporations valued by the Federal Reserve and leaves out financial corporations. Neither the Federal Reserve nor FRED publishes this ratio as a series. Comparisons of M2 with a stock index use index levels licensed by their providers; this composite uses Federal Reserve data in the public domain only.

What This Index Captures (And What It Doesn’t)

The corporate equities to M2 ratio is a structural gauge of equity wealth against money balances. It describes a regime; it is not a market-timing tool.

What it captures:

• The relative size of equity wealth and money: how many dollars of US nonfinancial corporate equity exist for each dollar of M2.
• Monetary regimes: phases when money grows faster than equity value, as in 1969–1982, and phases when equity value outpaces money, as in the 1990s or since 2023.
• A long, consistent comparison: one Federal Reserve method for both legs since 1959, covering all nonfinancial corporations, listed or not.

What it does NOT capture (common misinterpretations):

• It is not a stock index divided by M2. The numerator is the Z.1 market value of nonfinancial corporate equities, closely held firms included and banks and insurers excluded. It does not follow any index point for point, and its quarterly frequency misses moves within the quarter.
• A falling ratio is not always a falling market. Between Q4 1968 and Q2 1982 the ratio fell by 60% while the nominal market value of equities rose by 27%: M2 more than tripled over the same period.
• M2 is not market liquidity. M2 counts currency, deposits and retail money market funds. It leaves out institutional money funds and bank reserves, and a rise in M2 says nothing about money moving into equities.
• A record does not date a reversal. The ratio first crossed 3 in Q4 1999 and peaked in Q1 2000; it crossed 3 again in Q3 2025. The level shows how far equity value stands above money balances, not when or whether that gap narrows.

Read alongside the Buffett Indicator and the M2 to GDP ratio, it helps classify valuation and monetary regimes; it is not an allocation signal.

Historical Regimes

1959–1968: Equities outgrow money. The corporate equities to M2 ratio rose from 1.15 in Q1 1959 to 1.49 in Q4 1968, its highest level of the decade, as equity values grew faster than M2 during the long 1960s expansion. The NBER dates the end of that expansion to December 1969.

1969–1982: Inflation squeezes equities against money. M2 more than tripled between Q4 1968 and Q2 1982 while equity value rose 27% in nominal terms. The ratio fell to 0.61 in Q3 1974, in the recession that began in November 1973, and to its series low of 0.59 in Q2 1982, during the recession that began in July 1981.

1982–2000: Disinflation and the dot-com peak. From 0.59 the ratio climbed past 2 in Q2 1997 and past 3 in Q4 1999, peaking at 3.45 in Q1 2000, when nonfinancial corporate equities were worth $16.3 trillion against $4.7 trillion of M2. The NBER dates the next recession from March 2001.

2000–2019: Two busts and a long recovery. The corporate equities to M2 ratio fell to 1.53 in Q3 2002, recovered to 2.39 in Q2 2007, then dropped to 1.19 in Q1 2009, two quarters after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy of 15 September 2008. It crossed 2 again in Q4 2013 and stood at 2.28 in Q4 2019.

2020–2022: Money surge, then tightening. The ratio fell from 2.28 in Q4 2019 to 1.75 in Q1 2020, the quarter of the CARES Act (27 March 2020). M2 then grew about 36% in two years, but equity values grew faster and the ratio peaked at 2.53 in Q4 2021. After the Fed’s first rate increase of the cycle on 16 March 2022, the ratio fell to 1.88 in Q3 2022, and M2 contracted from $21.6 trillion in Q2 2022 to $20.8 trillion in Q4 2023.

2023–2026: Above the 2000 peak. M2 rose from $20.8 trillion in Q4 2023 to $23.1 trillion in Q2 2026 while equity values climbed much faster. The corporate equities to M2 ratio crossed 3 again in Q3 2025 and reached 3.60 in Q2 2026, a series record published in the Z.1 release of 11 September 2026.

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Deep Analytical Framework

This dataset belongs to the Liquidity and Financial Conditions research area: monetary plumbing, QE and QT cycles and their link with asset valuations.

Macroeconomic Dataset Hub

This dataset is part of the Eco3min macro-financial data repository.

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Sources

• Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US), Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1), Nonfinancial Corporate Business; Corporate Equities; Liability, Level [NCBEILQ027S], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Public domain, citation requested.
• Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US), M2 [M2SL], H.6 Money Stock Measures, retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Public domain, citation requested.
• Federal Reserve, Financial Accounts of the United States, 2026:Q2 release (11 September 2026) and release calendar.
• NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions: recession dates cited in Historical Regimes.
• Federal Reserve, FOMC statement of 16 March 2022.

The ratio is an Eco3min calculation on Federal Reserve data in the public domain. Eco3min grants no licence of its own on these data; please cite the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Dataset Reference

Eco3min Research. (2026). US Corporate Equities to M2 Ratio (1959–2026).<br> https://eco3min.fr/en/us-corporate-equities-to-m2-money-supply-dataset/