21200 – Economic Factors (APN Aggregate Macro-Volatility Index™)

The APN Aggregate Macro-Volatility Index™ (AMVI) is APN’s composite reading of Australia’s economic operating environment as it bears on residential property — the aggregate of nine equally-scoped vectors spanning the cost of capital, price and labour conditions, household finance, migration, construction cost pressure, credit velocity, business insolvency, and the construction completion lag. Economic Factors (APN Aggregate Macro-Volatility Index™) (21200) does not hold its own primary data; it is a weighted composite of its nine component nodes’ Z-scores, all taken at the same quarter.

The index is the weighted sum of its nine components’ Z-scores at the same quarter, under the March 2026 weights. It reads the latest quarter in which all nine components are available, so it carries one date. Each component is built from institutional data in its own right; the index sits one level up and holds no data of its own.

Position. 95.8.

The index can be ranked only from the September quarter 2021. A change in ASIC’s industry coding in July 2021 makes the insolvency inputs of two components not comparable across that date, so earlier quarters are not ranked. The March quarter 2026 is the highest of the 19 quarters since. With fewer than 20 quarters, the position is model-based: it allows for the index being an average of nine partly related readings, which makes it less variable than any one of them.

One quarter behind most components. Eight components are certified at the June quarter 2026. Migration Trends (21250) is at the March quarter, because net overseas migration is published about a quarter later than the other inputs. The index therefore reads the March quarter until the June migration figure is published.

Each component node is independently certified and independently published. Weight reflects each vector’s contribution to the AMVI composite.

Weights sum to 1.0000 exactly across all nine components, per the March 2026 weighting structure (unchanged through subsequent recertifications). Each card’s Z-score is the component’s own most recently certified reading, which for eight of the nine is the June quarter 2026; the composite above uses the March quarter for all nine.

The chart shows the index in every quarter, each component measured against its own baseline and all nine taken at the same quarter.

At +0.8481σ for the March quarter 2026, the index sits a little over four-fifths of a standard deviation above its baseline. Every component read at or above its own average in that quarter. The largest contributions came from Interest Rates (+1.0049σ at a weight of 0.20, contributing 0.20) and Inflation (+1.9302σ at 0.10, contributing 0.19), which together account for almost half of the reading. Migration Trends (+1.0390σ) and Construction Completion Lag (+2.0202σ at a weight of 0.05) each contributed about 0.10; the Migration Trends reading is for the March quarter, the seasonal high point of net overseas migration. Household Finance & Spending (+0.0144σ) sat at its average and contributed almost nothing.

The index has risen in each of the last three quarters, from +0.5570σ in the June quarter 2025 to +0.6583σ, +0.7656σ and +0.8481σ. Before that it held between +0.40σ and +0.58σ for eleven quarters, from December 2022 to June 2025. Until the December quarter 2025, the highest reading of the comparable record was +0.7529σ, in the September quarter 2022.