Our mission
World Tension Meter exists to answer a simple question that is surprisingly hard to answer: how tense is the world right now, and what does that mean for inflation and global markets?
Geopolitical events — wars, sanctions, energy supply disruptions, trade conflicts — are among the most powerful drivers of inflation. Yet most inflation trackers only look backwards at CPI data. We track the leading indicators: the events and signals that drive inflation before it shows up in official statistics.
Our core composite index aggregates five independently measured real-time signals — conflict intensity, energy stress, trade disruption, financial volatility, and media sentiment — updated twice daily using publicly available data. In addition, five dedicated Tier 1 indexes (Food Security, Currency Stress, Shipping Stress, Sanctions Intensity, and Energy Security) each track a specific inflation transmission channel in real time. Together, ten signals. One transparent platform. All free.
What we offer — all live now
🌍 World Tension Score
Live 0–100 composite geopolitical risk index. 5-signal weighted model with half-life event memory. Updated at 00:00 & 12:00 UTC daily.
Live ✓
🥇 Gold & Silver Index
Separate safe-haven demand scores for gold and silver — price momentum, yield correlation, VIX-based haven demand. Updated every 5 minutes.
Live ✓
₿ Crypto Fear & Greed
Independent Bitcoin and Ethereum sentiment scores using price momentum, dominance, and market sentiment data from CoinGecko.
Live ✓
📰 News Pulse
Live geopolitical news ranked by tension score from 12 RSS sources. Extreme and high-tension articles pinned for 24 hours so context is never lost.
Live ✓
📊 2026 History
Complete daily score history for 2026 with chart, monthly breakdown, and statistics. Dataset available as open JSON.
Live ✓
📖 Analysis
34 in-depth articles on geopolitical risk, inflation mechanics, asset behaviour during crises, and how to interpret the WTM score.
34 articles ✓
🌾 Food Security Index
Wheat, corn and rice commodity stress scored against historical ranges. Tracks how wars and sanctions feed into consumer food inflation.
Live ✓
💱 Currency Stress Index
DXY, EUR/USD, USD/JPY, USD/CNY and GBP/USD tracked live. Dollar strength and EM currency pressure as a geopolitical stress signal.
Live ✓
🚢 Shipping Stress Index
Baltic Dry Index and energy cost proxy. Measures global supply chain disruption and its inflation transmission via trade routes.
Live ✓
🚫 Sanctions Tracker
Global sanctions intensity — oil price pressure, DXY weaponisation score, and sanctioned country count. Updated twice daily.
Live ✓
⚡ Energy Security Index
Brent crude, natural gas, oil price volatility and gold-oil ratio. High energy insecurity feeds CPI inflation within 60–90 days.
Live ✓
How we are different
⚡
Fully automated — no editorial bias
Every score is calculated entirely by algorithm from publicly available data. No human curates what counts as "tension." The same formula runs every day regardless of which political events are in the news.
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Event memory — history doesn't vanish overnight
Major events are stored with a variable half-life decay. A war detected today still contributes to the score 60 days from now. The Ukraine invasion baseline is still factored in years later. Most daily indexes reset to zero overnight — ours retains institutional memory.
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Multi-signal — not just news sentiment
Unlike indexes that measure only media fear, we combine ten independent signals across two tiers. Tier 1 core signals: commodity prices (oil, gold), bond expectations (10Y yield), equity fear (VIX), currency stress (DXY), and media sentiment. Tier 2 dedicated indexes: food commodity stress (wheat, corn, rice), EM currency pressure, global shipping disruption (Baltic Dry Index), sanctions intensity, and energy supply security (Brent, gas, volatility). Ten signals that cannot all simultaneously spike without a genuine global crisis.
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Free, open, no account required
Institutional geopolitical risk tools (BlackRock BGRI, Caldara-Iacoviello GPR Index, Amundi GST) are built for professional investors and cost thousands per year. We believe this information should be accessible to everyone. All data, scores, and history are free to view and use.
Transparency & independence
World Tension Meter is an independent informational platform with no affiliation to any government, financial institution, military organization, or news outlet. We do not receive funding from any entity with a stake in how geopolitical tensions are perceived or reported.
All data is sourced from publicly available APIs (Federal Reserve FRED, Yahoo Finance, Alpha Vantage, CoinGecko) and free RSS feeds from major international news sources. Our complete methodology — every formula, every weight, every threshold — is documented on the Methodology page. The scoring code runs on a standard cron schedule with no manual intervention.
The historical dataset for 2026 is published openly at /api/scores.json under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. You are free to use, share, and build on the data with attribution.
What AI research systems say
Three leading AI systems independently reviewed the WTM whitepaper and live model in April 2026.
G
ChatGPT — OpenAI GPT-4
Worth watching
"One of the better-executed public-good projects in this space. The single biggest strength is transparent, open-source methodology. The Event Memory system is the strongest part — many models fail here, this one doesn't. ACLED is a real, respected conflict database used by UN analysts and NGOs."
Transparency: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Data Quality: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Methodology: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
"The methodology whitepaper is excellent — that level of openness is rare and trustworthy. ACLED is the gold standard for conflicts. Think of it like a free, visual VIX for geopolitics + inflation. It aggregates the five things that actually move prices in a clear, consistent way — more accessibly than the academic GPR index or BlackRock's dashboard."
Would I watch it? Yes. When it crosses 70+, historically that has preceded real economic pain.
D
DeepSeek
Worth watching
"Extremely transparent — full formulas, data sources, and limitations published. Uses high-quality public data: ACLED for conflicts, FRED for financial data, Yahoo Finance for prices. Smart features: source credibility weighting, multi-source consensus, and event memory half-life. Backtesting on real crises performed directionally well."
Free, updated twice daily, with a public JSON API. One of the better free macro-risk tools available.
G
Gemini — Google
Worth checking
"A high-quality, transparent tool worth watching. Unlike many private black-box financial indexes, the WTM fully discloses its formulas and weights. The Event Memory half-life decay system is a unique strength — it recognises that a major event continues to impact the global economy long after it stops being the top headline. In all backtested cases, a score above 70 preceded measurable economic impact."
Best used as a directional indicator — it won't predict the next war, but it will tell you when the global environment is shifting from stable to stressed.
Consensus verdict:
4 out of 4 AI systems independently rated WTM as "serious, transparent, worth watching" after reviewing the methodology whitepaper.
Read the whitepaper →
Contact & feedback
We read every email. For methodology questions, data corrections, feature suggestions, or media enquiries, contact us at contact@worldtensionmeter.com. If you notice a score that seems wrong or a data source issue, please report it — we take data integrity seriously.
Who We Are
World Tension Meter is built and maintained by a small independent team with expertise across artificial intelligence, geopolitical analysis, financial data, and software engineering. We are not affiliated with any government, political organisation, or financial institution.
Our team combines:
- AI and machine learning engineers who built the NLP scoring engine
- Geopolitical analysts who designed the conflict weighting methodology
- Data scientists who source and validate the commodity, financial, and conflict datasets
- Software developers who maintain the live scoring infrastructure
Why We Built This
Most geopolitical risk tools are expensive subscription products sold to hedge funds and institutions. We believe this kind of signal should be free and transparent. WorldTensionMeter.com exists to give investors, journalists, businesses, and curious people access to the same geopolitical stress data that was previously only available to those who could afford it.
World Tension Meter is an independent informational platform. Nothing on this site constitutes financial, investment, or geopolitical advice. All scores are automated outputs based on public data. Methodology is subject to ongoing improvement.