ASX Drivers Index

What this measures

This gauge reads the external forces that drive Australian shares — export commodity prices, the Australian dollar, the bond-yield curve, global credit conditions and how heavily the market is positioned short — and asks whether, taken together, they are a tailwind or a headwind.

Because the ASX is so concentrated in miners and banks, these forces explain much of what moves it — and all six come from free, official sources, so no licensed share-price data is needed. It measures conditions, not share prices, and makes no forecast.

The headline shows where today sits against the index’s own history: 50 is typical, a low number marks an unusually strong headwind and a high number an unusually strong tailwind. The six component bars stay on their own raw 0–100 scale.

Why these six factors

• Commodity complex. Resources are about a quarter of the ASX and the swing factor in its earnings; iron ore, coal, LNG and base metals move the miners and the nation’s terms of trade.
• The Australian dollar. A textbook risk-on / risk-off currency: it rises when global investors want Australian assets and falls when they retreat.
• Yield-curve slope. The 10y–2y gap drives bank net-interest margins — financials are the ASX’s other large bloc — and leads the economic cycle.
• Global credit risk. Australian equities are highly geared to global risk appetite; the US high-yield spread is the cleanest measure of whether global capital is reaching for risk or fleeing it.
• AUD volatility. How turbulent the dollar has been, regardless of direction — the AUD whips around in risk-off episodes, so its realised volatility is a clean fear gauge.
• Short positioning. Aggregate short interest is the one input that measures how investors are actually positioned on ASX stocks rather than inferring it.