MIKE ECONOMIC DATA
State of the MIKE Economy - Q3 2026
For Release: October 15, 2026
Executive Summary
Q3 2026 was the first full quarter the MIKE Economy ran without a paycheck. The employer-linked lines that took the June shock did not keep falling.
Wealth opened on a one-time influx that lifted the index to 154.4 and then drifted, 1.9% in August and 5.0% in September, closing at 143.8 with the lowest reading of the quarter still 43.8 points above baseline. Productivity came off its record low but did not clear 100 in any month, and the tracked hours underneath it, 114 to 159 a month against 212 to 214 in the spring, say the calendar did not refill.
The lines that compound on their own kept compounding. Health set a new series record in August, 117.8, in the first full month after the move from Portland to Oakland. Media velocity had its best quarter since Q4 2025. The vault tripled in size, but on a one-time migration, and its organic pace slowed.
Social capital was the line the quarter was supposed to test, with the Shareholder Summit on July 11 as the catalyst. The July reading moved three hundredths of a point. The one large move SCI did make, in August, was a data artifact and was corrected the next month. Set against the share price, none of it registers: a rank correlation of all six indicators against the price over twelve months finds nothing that survives inspection, and the quarter's busiest market days had no connection to the data.
Key Highlights: The quarter opened with six questions and answered four: health and media did not revert, productivity came off the floor but stayed under 100, the Summit did not move social capital, and the knowledge pace fell in September.
Wealth Index
143.8↑ +35.0%
Averaged 149.9, the highest on the current scale, then drifted from 154.4 to 143.8 as a July one-time influx aged and September absorbed travel.
Health Index
110.1↑ +3.9%
New series record in August at 117.8, the first full month in Oakland. Averaged 113.2 against 106.9 in Q2.
Productivity Index
93.75↑ +11.9%
Off the 83.75 floor to 96.25, then 93.75 for two fully tracked months. Sixth consecutive month under 100.
Knowledge Base
18,614↑ +202.3%
Tripled to 18,614 on a one-time Evernote migration. Organic adds fell from 250 in August to 164 in September.
Social Capital
101.23↑ +0.07%
Flat for a third quarter at 101.23. August's 104.17 was a LinkedIn spam artifact, corrected in September.
Media Velocity
15↑ +36.4%
11, 8 and 15 for an 11.3 average, the strongest quarter since Q4 2025. Five films and four books in September.
Detailed Analysis
Portland to Oakland
The quarter had the shape the June outlook expected: another relocation, not a steady stretch. July ran in Portland through the Shareholder Summit on July 11, with 25 bike rides logged before cycling stopped on July 26 with the move to Oakland. August was the first full month in the Bay Area, with walking replacing the Portland cycling, and the quarter closed with travel to Kosovo in the last days of September.
The quarter's other defining fact is what did not happen: no new commitment refilled the calendar. The productivity tracker logged 114 hours in July (on 81% coverage), 159 in August and 141 in September, against 212 to 214 in the spring. That gap is where a job used to be, and it is the context for every line below: the free-time lines had a full quarter of free time to work with, and the employer-linked lines had nothing new to lift them.
Wealth: A High Shelf, Drifting
PWI averaged 149.9 across the quarter, the highest quarterly average since the series rebased to 100 in March 2026 and well above Q2's 122.2. The arc: July 154.4, August 151.4, September 143.8.
The July reading comes with a disclosure. A one-time influx drove it, which is now fully in the level rather than recurring as flow. Everything after July is therefore a drift from a cushioned starting point: down 1.9% in August, which reflects only the absence of the one-time money from the comparison and no change in operations, and down 5.0% in September, most of it travel paid in full inside the month and the rest the same steady drift as August. Fixed costs remain structurally low, with no housing expense.
The floor test the quarter opened with was never run. The question in June was whether wealth would hold near 100 without income; the lowest reading of the quarter was 43.8 points above that. The question Q3 leaves behind is a rate question instead. Two months of drift, at 2% and then 5%, is the first run-rate reading on what a quarter of no income and low fixed costs costs. August is the cleaner of the two; September had a one-time item in it.
Health: A Record in Oakland
PHI was the quarter's standout for the second quarter running, and this time the record is unambiguous. August's 117.8 is the highest reading in the rebuilt series, which reaches back to January 2023. It clears May 2026's 113.2 and January 2023's 112.4, the two previous highs. July printed 111.6 and September 110.1, for a 113.2 quarterly average against Q2's 106.9 and Q1's 98.8.
The record came from activity. August was the first full month in Oakland, and steps ran 71% above the 2023 to 2025 norm as walking replaced the Portland cycling that had carried July. September held activity and fitness well above baseline, with the step score at its 160 ceiling, and gave ground on sleep: nights ran shorter and far less regular than August, and the Kosovo travel at month's end made both worse. The index did what it was rebuilt to do, scoring the sleep deficit against the activity surplus instead of letting volume carry the month.
The June outlook expected mean reversion here if a new commitment refilled the calendar. The calendar did not refill, and health did not revert. Three months above 110 is the longest such run in the series.
Productivity: Off the Floor, Under the Line
PPI recovered from June's record-low 83.75 to 96.25 in July, then settled at 93.75 in August and again in September. The quarterly average of 94.6 is above Q2's 91.3 and the trend is up on a quarter-over-quarter close, +11.9%. It is also the sixth consecutive month below 100, tying the six-month run of January to June 2025 for the longest sub-baseline stretch in the series.
Two readings need their footnotes. July was tracked on 25 of 31 days: five days with no tracking and one offline, so its pulse and hours describe 81% of the month. August and September were fully tracked, which means the step down from July is measured rather than an artifact of coverage. The pulse, the share of tracked time rated productive, sat at 77, 75 and 75: steady, and a few points under the 80 that marks 100 on the index.
The hours carry the story. 114, 159 and 141 tracked hours, against 212 to 214 a month in the spring. Less time at the desk, scored at roughly the same quality. Nothing in the data reads as hidden output.
Knowledge: The Migration and the Pace
KBER closed the quarter at 18,614 notes, up 12,456 from June's 6,158. The number is true and the percentage, +202.3%, measures nothing about the quarter's writing. In July a one-time migration moved roughly 12,000 Evernote notes into the Obsidian vault, against a baseline of about 245 organic notes a month. The vault is now three times the size it was in June, and every month-over-month percentage computed across July is meaningless: the same 250 notes that read as 4.1% growth on the old base read as 1.4% on the new one.
The organic record is the two months after. August added 250 notes, in line with the monthly baseline. September added 164, below it. The June outlook asked whether the decelerating pace would plateau or resume; it held in August and fell in September. The deceleration the Q2 figures showed has continued, and the migration's step change will hide it on the chart for a year.
From here the series is best read as a count plus a monthly add, and the monthly add is the number to watch. The migration put the Evernote archive within reach of the retrieval layer built in Q1; whether that changes the writing rate is a Q4 question.
Social Capital: The Summit Did Not Move It
SCI entered the quarter with one dated test. The Shareholder Summit fell on July 11, and the June outlook said that if summit week did not lift shareholder accounts or the mailing list in the Q3 data, the flat line stopped being a caution. The July reading, which covers summit month, moved from 101.16 to 101.19.
August then printed 104.17, the largest monthly move in the series, and it has to be read with its correction. Effectively all of the jump was a LinkedIn follower input. LinkedIn's own data shows no such jump; the suspected cause is a wave of spam accounts that was later scrubbed from the record, and September's 101.23 corrects it. The other ten platforms were essentially flat across the quarter. The only large move this line has ever made was a data error.
So the quarter closes at 101.23 against June's 101.16. Since January the published series has left a quarter-point band around 101 exactly once, and that once was the August error. The audiences that carry the most weight in the composite, registered KmikeyM accounts at 35% and the mailing list at 30%, did not grow through the one event built to grow them. A one-day gathering turned out to be the wrong instrument for an eleven-platform follower composite. The line is no longer waiting on a catalyst. What changes next is the instrument: on September 22 the Board adopted a revised formula, SCI 2.0, which re-weights the platforms by economic pull rather than headcount. It has not been implemented. This report and the October 1 release use the original method; the first release on the new one is scheduled for November 1, 2026, with the original series kept readable as SCI Classic.
Media: The Calendar Filled With Films and Books
LMV ran 11 in July, 8 in August and 15 in September, for an 11.3 average against Q2's 9.0. It is the strongest quarter since Q4 2025's 13.0, and September's 15 is the highest single reading since the 16 reported for November 2025.
The composition shifted inside the quarter. July's 11 was 11 films and no books; the zero is confirmed rather than a feed gap. Mike read during July but finished nothing, and LMV scores completions only, so a month of reading without a finish scores the same as a month of no reading. That is a property of the measure, and it argues for a change to the chart: a book finished on the 1st and one finished on the 31st land a month apart, so the monthly figure carries timing noise that a trailing three-month line would smooth. The averaging function exists in the dashboard's code; the series page does not yet draw it. Adding that line to the Media Velocity chart is a Q4 item. August was a light month, two films and two books. September was five films and four books.
The June outlook expected this line to give back its gains if a new commitment filled the calendar. The calendar stayed open and media velocity held and then rose. Whether it holds at 15 is the Q4 question; the history says a 15 is usually followed by a lower month.
The Q3 Questions
June posed six questions for this quarter. Four are answered, one was never tested, and one is not the dashboard's to answer.
Does the layoff dividend revert?No
PHI averaged 113.2 against 106.9 and set a series record; LMV averaged 11.3 against 9.0. The premise, that a new commitment would refill the calendar, did not occur: tracked hours ran 114 to 159 a month against 212 to 214 in the spring.
Does wealth hold near 100 without income?Not tested
The lowest reading was 143.8. A one-time influx in July put the index on a shelf 50 points above the floor, and two months of drift (1.9%, then 5.0%) is the first reading on how fast the shelf erodes.
Does productivity recover?Partial
Off the 83.75 floor to 96.25, then 93.75 twice. Six consecutive months under 100.
Does the Summit move social capital?No move
July 101.19 against June 101.16. August's jump was a LinkedIn data artifact, corrected in September.
Does San Francisco land?Not in the data
The step-change variable did not appear: no month shows the hours or the income a new role would bring. Beyond that the dashboard has nothing to say.
Does the knowledge pace plateau or resume?Fell in September
Organic adds went from about 245 a month to 250 in August and 164 in September, underneath a one-time migration that tripled the base.
The pattern is the same one the June data showed, extended by a quarter. The lines an employer never touched kept compounding. The lines an employer used to lift held at a lower level instead of falling further. And the structural line, social capital, took its one scheduled test and did not move.
The Market in Mike: External Against Internal
| Month | Price close | Shares traded | Trades (fills) | PWI | PHI | PPI | SCI | KBER | LMV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul | $4.98 | 98.8 | 22 | 154.4 | 111.6 | 96.25 | 101.19 | 18,200 | 11 |
| Aug | $4.98 | 16.1 | 5 | 151.4 | 117.8 | 93.75 | 104.17 | 18,450 | 8 |
| Sep | $4.26 | 124 | 16 | 143.8 | 110.1 | 93.75 | 101.23 | 18,614 | 15 |
Price is the last trade of the month on kmikeym.com; shares and fills are that month's totals, summed from individual fills. A fill is one match between a buyer and a seller; one order can produce several.
| Indicator | Same month | Indicator leads by 1 month | Indicator leads by 2 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| PWI | +0.37 | +0.67 | +0.12 |
| PHI | +0.60 | +0.44 | +0.41 |
| SCI | +0.46 | +0.30 | +0.41 |
| KBER | +0.35 | +0.55 | +0.39 |
| PPI | -0.03 | -0.24 | -0.39 |
| LMV | -0.35 | -0.41 | -0.01 |
Twelve months at lag 0, eleven at lag 1, ten at lag 2. Threshold for significance is roughly 0.58 at twelve observations, 0.62 at eleven and 0.65 at ten. Tied values take ordinal ranks; average ranks move cells by up to 0.06 and change no conclusion. Four KBER inputs and one SCI input are estimated. Indicator data as of mike-fred commit 018a460.
Nothing in the economy predicts the price, and the quarter just closed shows why. August was the economy's best month of the quarter, with the health record and wealth still above 150, and the market's quietest: five trades, sixteen shares, price unchanged. September was the economy's softest month and the market's busiest, but the activity was two sales into resting bids at 4.26 and one 89-share lift of a resting ask ladder to 5.35. None of it was a reaction to anything the dashboard measures.
The correlation table says the same thing with more months. Two figures clear the threshold, PHI at lag zero and PWI leading by a month. Every row keeps its sign across all three lags, so the test in the method box is passed, but passing it is not the same as meaning something. The table runs eighteen tests on twelve months, and at that count one or two clearing the bar by chance is the expected result. The sizes do not hold either: PWI's 0.67 sits between 0.37 and 0.12, and PHI drops from 0.60 to 0.44 at lag one. PHI's same-month figure is two series that both drifted upward over the same year. Treat every cell as noise.
The reason is structural rather than a matter of waiting for more data. The price is set by resting market-maker quotes, and most months see fewer than ten trades, so a month's close is whichever side of the ladder the last trade touched. Four of the six indicators compound without anyone buying a share: a share is not a claim on net worth or on step count, so wealth at 154 and a health record have no channel to the price. The one channel that exists is social capital, and the Summit was its test. Summit week produced the quarter's only event-driven volume, 65 shares over July 11 to 14 with the price moving from 4.75 to 4.99 and touching 5.00 once, and the follower composite moved three hundredths of a point. The market and the index agree the event was small.
So the external valuation and the internal one are not currently connected, and the reason sits in the market's plumbing rather than in Mike. The series that would connect them, trade volume and new shareholder accounts in the weeks after a release, a Summit or a report, is one this dashboard does not yet carry. Until participation is measured, the price has nothing to correlate with. This table will be rerun each quarter. Expect it to stay empty until that series exists.
Year-over-Year (partial)
Q3 2025 vs Q3 2026
PPI
-8.8%PHI
+21.1%LMV
+70.0%Four of the six indicators now reach back a full year to Q3 2025. KBER and SCI began in October 2025 and get their first complete year-over-year read in the Q4 2026 report.
PPI: Q3 2025 average 103.75 to Q3 2026 average 94.58, down 8.8%. Last year's third quarter was the series' peak, 101.25, 105 and 105 on a new role and dual projects. This year's ran entirely below baseline with no employer. It is the clearest year-over-year deterioration on the board and the fairest.
PHI: Q3 2025 average 93.43 to Q3 2026 average 113.17, up 21.1%. The rebuilt health series reaches back to 2023, so this is a real comparison. In points it is the largest year-over-year gain of the four (+19.7); in percent, LMV's +70.0% is larger. Last year's third quarter included the first relocation month, when activity floored; this year's included a relocation and a record.
LMV: Q3 2025 average 6.67 to Q3 2026 average 11.33, up 70.0%. The percentage is large because the base is small; the Q3 2025 months were 3, 5 and 12. Read it as a return to the 2025 spring pace rather than a surge.
PWI: a base effect. The series rebased to 100 in March 2026, so Q3 2025's readings (-0.5, 3.0, 6.6) are on a different scale and the percentage is not meaningful. It washes out in Q3 2027.
From the Q4 2026 report, all six indicators carry a full year of history and year-over-year becomes a standard section.
Indicator Scorecard
Wealth Index
Financial
143.8
↑ +35.0%
Knowledge Base
Learning
18,614
↑ +202.3%
Health Index
Health & Wellness
110.1
↑ +3.9%
Social Capital
Social
101.2
↑ +0.1%
Productivity Index
Productivity
93.8
↑ +11.9%
Media Velocity
Learning & Growth
15.0
↑ +36.4%
Q4 2026 Outlook: The Rate, Not the Level
Q4 opens on the road again, with two weeks of October in Los Angeles before a return to Oakland, so the routine-dependent lines face a fourth consecutive quarter of adjustment rather than a first steady one. The forecast is about rates rather than levels: the levels are known, the rates are not.
Wealth is the clearest case. The index sits at 143.8 on a one-time cushion that is now aging. September's 5.0% drift included a one-time travel item; August's 1.9% did not. If the quarter runs between those two rates, PWI ends the year somewhere between the low 120s and the mid-130s, still well above baseline. A new income source moves it the other way and would show up first as a break in the drift. The floor test that Q3 skipped becomes a 2027 question only if nothing changes.
Health enters Q4 from a record quarter and against the softest comparison in the series: Q4 2025 averaged 87.3 amid the first relocation, so the year-over-year read will flatter it. The test is sleep. Activity has held above baseline for three months and is near its ceiling; the sleep pillar is where September lost ground and where travel does its damage. A fourth month above 110 would make the current level the new normal rather than a run.
Productivity has a simpler question. Seven consecutive months under 100, or not. The pulse has been steady at 75 to 77; the hours are the variable, and the hours are a calendar question the dashboard can only observe.
One variable entered after the quarter closed and is not priced into any of the above: an opportunity to spend time on a new project in Bangkok. Whether it happens, how long it runs, and what a third base in a year does to the routine-dependent lines is unknown. If it lands it is Q4's step-change variable, the way San Francisco was Q3's, and it cuts both ways: a project refills the hours that PPI has been missing, and a move resets the sleep and activity routines that carried PHI.
Knowledge is now two numbers: a count the migration set, and a monthly add that fell to 164 in September. The add is the one to watch. Social capital has taken its scheduled test and the test is over. SCI 2.0, adopted by the Board on September 22, is due in the November 1 release. The Q4 report will be the first on the new method; it will restate this quarter's readings under 2.0 alongside the Classic figures, so nothing here has to be edited.
The Q4 2026 report is due January 15, 2027, and will be the first with a full year of history on all six indicators.
Watch list for Q4 2026:
• PWI drift rate: does the monthly decline hold near 2%, or near September's 5%
• PHI sleep pillar: the one pillar that softened in September, under October travel
• Bangkok: whether the project happens, and what it does to hours (PPI) and routine (PHI)
• PPI: a seventh month under 100, or the first month over it since February
• KBER organic adds: 164 in September against a 245 baseline
• SCI 2.0: ships November 1 or slips, and what the re-weighted index sees that Classic cannot
• LMV: whether 15 holds, or reverts as the history suggests
Methodology & Data Sources
MIKE Economic Data tracks six indicators across productivity, financial, health, social, and intellectual domains. Raw data is collected monthly in CSV format, normalized against established baselines, and snapshotted quarterly for historical comparison. All source data and transformation logic is open-source and publicly auditable.
© 2025 MIKE Economic Data. All rights reserved.
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