LatAm Economic Stress Monitor

A cross-signal economic stress monitor for 7 Latin American economies. It combines FX, inflation, export-weighted commodity, real-interest-rate, and official-reserve data into a transparent, rules-based stress verdict plus a continuous 0–100 stress score — and a second gauge for slow-moving structural vulnerability (sovereign debt, fiscal balance, banking-sector health, external-buffer adequacy, currency valuation, and political/institutional risk). Each record also carries sovereign credit ratings (S&P, Moody's, Fitch) with recent rating actions as an independent external benchmark. Never a black box: every verdict shows exactly which signals fired and why, and each run reports what changed since the last one.

Delayed data. Verdicts are computed from delayed official sources (central-bank FX, national CPI, World Bank commodity prices, central-bank policy rates, World Bank reserves, World Bank debt & external-sector statistics), never real-time feeds.

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Modes

Mode	Input	Output	Price
crisis-scan (default)	none	all 7 countries, ranked by stress	$1.50 flat / run
country-snapshot	country (ISO alpha-2)	full profile + verdict for one country	$0.50 / country

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Notion integration (optional)

Each run can write a summary row per country to a Notion database using Apify MCP Connectors — no API key stored in the actor.

Setup (once):

1. In Apify Console → Settings → API & Integrations, create a Notion MCP connector and authenticate it with your Notion workspace.
2. Share the target database with your Notion integration.
3. Set the two optional input fields when running the actor:

Input field	What to put
notionConnector	The connector ID shown in Apify Console (select from the picker)
notionDatabaseId	The 32-char hex ID from your Notion database URL (notion.so/workspace/<id>?v=…)

Both fields are optional — omit them and the actor runs normally without touching Notion.

What gets written: one database row per country per run, mapped to these property types:

Notion property	Type	Content
Country	title	Country name (e.g. "Brazil")
Verdict	select	stable / watch / elevated / stress / insufficient-data
Stress Score	number	Continuous 0–100 score (omitted when null)
Vulnerability Level	select	low / moderate / high / unavailable
Fired Signals	text	Comma-separated signal names, both gauges (e.g. fxMomentum, debtDistress)
Coverage Level	select	full / partial / minimal / none
Last Updated	date	Run timestamp (ISO 8601)
Actor Run URL	url	Direct link to the Apify run log

A Notion write failure is non-fatal — the actor run completes normally and logs a warning.

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The verdict

Gauge 1 — acute stress. Five fast-moving signals, each fired / not-fired / unavailable:

Signal	Fires when
FX momentum	currency depreciates >5% over 30 days, or >15% over 90 days
Inflation level	YoY CPI >20%, or >10% and accelerating month-on-month
Commodity shock	the country's primary-export commodity move, weighted by how much the country depends on it, implies a terms-of-trade hit of ≥5 percentage points of export value (price YoY% × commodity's share of the country's exports). A global price fall is no longer the same signal for every producer — oil −40% is a −12pp hit for Colombia (oil ≈30% of exports) but negligible for Brazil (manufacturing dominates; oil ≈11%). (Where no export-share figure exists, falls back to a volatility-tiered price threshold: 10% gold/platinum · 20% copper/soybeans/coffee · 25% crude/coal/wheat.)
Real interest rate	policy rate − inflation YoY is deeply negative (< −3pp) — savings erosion / capital-flight / financial-repression risk. Available where both a central-bank policy rate and CPI are published (currently 5 of 7 — see coverage table).
Reserve drawdown	official FX reserves fall >12.5% over 6 months, or >20% YoY — the classic FX-crisis predictor (a central bank burning reserves to defend the currency / cover external gaps). Rising reserves never fire.

Verdict from the count of fired signals: 0 → stable · 1 → watch · 2 → elevated · 3+ → stress.

Stress score (0–100). Alongside the categorical verdict, each record carries a continuous, z-aware stressScore — a weighted blend of how far each signal is past its threshold and how unusual the move is versus the country's own history. It differentiates countries the coarse verdict lumps together, and it is the ranking key for crisis-scan. Weights: FX 0.28 · reserves 0.20 · inflation 0.22 · real rate 0.16 · commodity 0.14 (lowest — it's an exogenous global price; the two external-account signals FX + reserves carry the most). stressScoreBasis shows each signal's contribution.

Gauge 2 — structural vulnerability. Alongside the acute read, each record carries a separate vulnerabilityScore (0–100) and vulnerabilityLevel (low/moderate/high) — how fragile the country is underneath, distinct from how much stress it's under right now. Six slow-moving structural signals feed it:

Structural signal	Fires when
Debt distress	external debt >60% of GNI, or debt service >25% of exports, or short-term debt >100% of reserves (Guidotti-Greenspan)
External adequacy	reserve buffer <3 months of imports, or a current-account deficit wider than 8% of GDP
Fiscal solvency	fiscal deficit wider than 6% of GDP, or government debt >70% of GDP — the flow that builds the debt overhang
REER misalignment	the real effective exchange rate sits >15% above the country's own multi-year average — an overvalued currency, a devaluation risk
Financial stress	bank nonperforming loans >10% of gross loans (banking asset quality), or a credit-to-GDP boom — private credit >9 percentage points of GDP above its own recent trend (the BIS / Schularick-Taylor early-warning indicator)
Political stability	World Bank WGI governance — Political Stability & Absence of Violence below −1.0, or Rule of Law below −1.0 (estimate −2.5…+2.5; a low reading = elevated political / event risk, the trigger that turns latent vulnerability into crisis)

These never touch the acute verdict or stressScore — a country can be calm today yet structurally fragile (or the reverse). The headline alarm is when both gauges are hot: the cross-gauge acute_stress_x_high_vulnerability compound flag fires when an elevated/stress verdict meets high vulnerability — the setup Argentina has repeatedly been in ahead of its debt crises. (World Bank data is annual and CC-BY licensed; these are slow-moving ratios — external-debt/GNI moves only ~3–5pp a year — so a ~2-year-old vintage is representative. Each value carries its dataYear; anything older than ~3 years is dropped per metric.)

z-score. Each signal reports a zScore — how unusual the current move is against that country's own history (a 4% depreciation means more for a managed peg like Argentina's exchange controls than a free float like Brazil's). It feeds the stress score and the reason text but, by design, never flips the categorical fire/not-fire (which stays on the same documented absolute rule everywhere).

Trend & compound flags. Each signal reports a trend (deteriorating/improving/stable); and compoundFlags surfaces reinforcing combinations — twin_external_pressure (FX + commodity), fx_inflation_spiral, stagflation_risk (inflation + negative real rate), reserve_defence (FX depreciating while reserves are drawn down — defending the currency by burning reserves), and the cross-gauge acute_stress_x_high_vulnerability (acute stress meeting high structural fragility). These are context; they don't change the fired count.

What changed (delta). Each record diffs against the previous run: verdictChange, stressScoreDelta, firedCountDelta, and per-signal status changes. null on the first ever run. The diff is only as meaningful as the interval between runs — schedule the actor (daily or weekly) so the comparison spans a real period; two runs minutes apart will show sinceRunAgeDays: 0 and little movement. sinceRunAgeDays is always reported so you can see the window the delta covers, and the underlying official data refreshes on its own cadence (FX daily → CPI/commodity monthly), so a weekly schedule is a sensible default.

Staleness: each signal has a freshness cutoff (FX 7 days, inflation 90 days, commodity 45 days, reserves 180 days). Beyond it the signal is unavailable — stale data never drives a verdict. Reserves are an end-of-period stock, so the latest figure is aged from the last day of its month, the correct convention for stock data.

Sovereign credit ratings (external benchmark). Each record carries creditRatings — the current long-term foreign-currency grade and outlook from S&P, Moody's, and Fitch, sourced from countryeconomy.com. This is a standalone external-validation field; it does not feed stressScore or vulnerabilityScore. recentActions surfaces all rating changes and outlook shifts in the trailing 24 months (newest first), each with a plain-language sentence (e.g. "S&P downgraded to BB- (Stable) on 2026-04-08"). Useful as an independent cross-check: a model vulnerabilityLevel: high with three investment-grade ratings, or a stable verdict with a recent downgrade, are both worth flagging.

Honesty rules:

• If fewer than 2 signals are computable for a country, the verdict is insufficient-data (and stressScore is null) — never a falsely reassuring "stable". "Stable" always means we checked and nothing fired, not we couldn't look.
• Every record carries coverageLevel (full/partial/minimal/none), a dataCoherence flag (fresh = computable signals within 45 days of each other · mixed = 45–90 days apart · stale = >90 days apart), and a per-signal breakdown with the numbers, the threshold, the trend, and a plain-language reason.

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Coverage (verified 2026-06-12)

The commodity signal is a weighted export basket (each country's main Pink-Sheet-priced exports × their share of total exports), so a global price move becomes a country-specific terms-of-trade impact. Export-share data from OEC 2023.

Country	FX	Inflation	Commodity basket	Real rate	Reserves	Signals wired*
Argentina (AR)	✅ BCRA	✅ INDEC	✅ soy meal · soy oil · soybeans · corn · oil · beef	— (policy tool abolished)	✅ WB	4
Brazil (BR)	✅ BCB	✅ IBGE SIDRA	✅ soybeans · iron ore · oil · soy meal · sugar · beef	✅ BCB Selic	✅ WB	5
Chile (CL)	✅ Mindicador	✅ IMF	✅ copper · lithium	✅ BCCh TPM	✅ WB	5
Colombia (CO)	✅ TRM Colombia	✅ IMF	✅ crude oil · coal · coffee · gold	✅ BanRep (BIS)	✅ WB	5
Mexico (MX)	✅ Banxico†	✅ IMF	✅ crude oil	✅ Banxico (BIS)	✅ WB	5
Peru (PE)	✅ BCRP	✅ IMF	✅ copper · gold · zinc · lead · silver	✅ BCRP (BIS)	✅ WB	5
Uruguay (UY)	⚠️ BCU (TCP-blocked)	✅ IMF	✅ beef · soybeans · wheat	⚠️ BCU (TCP-blocked; 180d cache)	✅ WB	3–4

* "Signals wired" is the potential — sources with a feed connected. The live computableCount per run is the truth. Treat this column as the ceiling, not a promise.

† Mexico (MX) requires a BANXICO_TOKEN actor secret (Banxico SIE API token). Set it once in Apify Console → Actor → Secrets. Without it, Mexico's FX signal is unavailable and the real-rate signal cannot be computed.

Notes. Inflation: Argentina (INDEC CPI) and Brazil (IBGE SIDRA IPCA) are covered by national databases; Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay are gap-filled from the IMF CPI dataflow (attributed; derived YoY/MoM). Policy rates: Brazil's Selic rate is fetched from BCB's open-data JSON API; Chile's TPM from mindicador.cl (which aggregates Banco Central de Chile data); Colombia, Mexico and Peru from the Bank for International Settlements WS_CBPOL dataflow (daily central-bank rates, BIS public use); Uruguay's BCU COPOM decision page is TCP-blocked from Apify datacenter IPs (see Known limitations). Argentina's BCRA formally abolished its Selic-equivalent policy tool under the Milei administration (2023–), so realRate is unavailable for AR. Commodity: Mexico's commodity signal is limited — manufacturing dominates its export mix and crude oil is only ~6% of exports; a global oil move has a smaller macro impact here than in Colombia or Peru. Chile's basket includes lithium (13% of exports, OEC 2023) but the BCCh BDE price fetcher is not yet implemented — Chile runs on copper alone currently. Reserves: currently unavailable for all 7 countries — the World Bank FI.RES.TOTL.CD annual series is ~528 days old (2024 year-end), well past the 180-day freshness cutoff. The signal is correctly unavailable rather than serving stale data. Monthly central-bank reserve data is the fix path; see Known limitations.

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Output (one record per country)

{
  "schemaVersion": 15,
  "country": "CO",
  "countryName": "Colombia",

  // ── Gauge 1 — acute stress (fast signals). CO has a full basket (oil/coal/coffee/gold)
  //    and BanRep policy rate via BIS WS_CBPOL. Inflation gap-filled from IMF CPI. ──
  "verdict": "watch",
  "stressScore": 31.2,
  "stressScoreBasis": [ { "signal": "fxMomentum", "weight": 0.28, "subScore": 0.7 }, { "signal": "inflationLevel", "weight": 0.22, "subScore": 0.1 }, { "signal": "commodityShock", "weight": 0.14, "subScore": 0.0 }, { "signal": "realRate", "weight": 0.16, "subScore": 0.0 }, { "signal": "reserveDrawdown", "weight": 0.20, "subScore": 0.0 } ],
  "coverageLevel": "full",
  "dataCoherence": "fresh",
  "firedCount": 1,
  "computableCount": 5,
  "asOf": "2026-06-05",
  "signals": {
    "fxMomentum":      { "status": "fired",     "reason": "USD/COP 30d +6.1% ...; +2.0σ vs own history", "value": 6.1, "threshold": ">5% over 30d, or >15% over 90d", "trend": "deteriorating", "zScore": 2.0 },
    "inflationLevel":  { "status": "not-fired",  "reason": "YoY 4.9%, MoM steady (2026-04)", "value": 4.9, "threshold": "YoY >20%, or >10% and MoM accelerating", "trend": "improving", "zScore": -0.8 },
    "commodityShock":  { "status": "not-fired",  "reason": "Export basket +0.5pp terms-of-trade impact [oil ..., coal ..., coffee ...]", "value": 0.5, "threshold": "basket terms-of-trade impact ≤ −5pp", "trend": "stable", "zScore": -0.2 },
    "realRate":        { "status": "not-fired",  "reason": "Real rate +6.35pp = policy 11.25% − inflation 4.9%", "value": 6.35, "threshold": "real rate < −3pp", "trend": "stable", "zScore": null },
    "reserveDrawdown": { "status": "not-fired",  "reason": "Reserves stable YoY +1.2% (World Bank 2024, annual fallback)", "value": 1.2, "threshold": "reserves down >20% YoY, or >12.5% over 6m", "trend": "stable", "zScore": null }
  },

  // ── Gauge 2 — structural vulnerability ──
  "vulnerabilityScore": 41.0,
  "vulnerabilityLevel": "moderate",
  "vulnerabilitySignals": {
    "debtDistress":       { "status": "not-fired", ... },
    "externalAdequacy":   { "status": "fired",     "reason": "CA deficit 3.8% of GDP (2024, annual)", ... },
    "fiscalSolvency":     { "status": "not-fired", ... },
    "reerMisalignment":   { "status": "not-fired", ... },
    "financialStress":    { "status": "not-fired", ... },
    "politicalStability": { "status": "not-fired", ... }
  },

  "compoundFlags": [],

  // ── Narrative patterns (schema 14). Empty when no pattern fires. ──
  "narrativeFlags": [],
  // Possible values: "masked_fragility" (acute calm + structural high vulnerability),
  // "compounding_risk" (both gauges elevated), "improving_from_extreme:<signal>"
  // (signal fires on absolute threshold but z < −1 vs own history — extreme but easing).

  // ── Company signals (schema 13): listed companies affected by an active commodity signal. ──
  "companySignals": [],
  // Empty when no commodity signal is active. Each entry: { name, ticker, exchange,
  // signalCount, commoditySignals[{ commodityCode, direction, exportImpactPct, ... }] }

  // ── Underlying delayed values ──
  "fx":        { "pair": "USD/COP", "latest": 4310, "asOf": "2026-06-05", "change30dPct": 6.1, ... },
  "inflation": { "period": "2026-04", "yoyPct": 4.9, "momPct": -0.1, "accelerating": false, ... },
  "commodity": { "period": "2026-04", "basketSharePct": 53, "exportImpactPct": 0.5, "components": [ ... ], ... },
  "realRate":  { "policyRatePct": 11.25, "inflationYoyPct": 4.9, "realRatePct": 6.35, "asOf": "2026-06-01", ... },
  "reserves":  { "period": "2024-12", "latestUsd": 58900000000, "changeYoyPct": 1.2, ... },
  "debtDistress": { "extDebtGniPct": 52.1, "debtServiceExportsPct": 18.3, "shortTermDebtReservesPct": 34.2, "dataYear": 2023, ... },
  "externalAdequacy": { "importCoverMonths": 4.2, "currentAccountGdpPct": -3.8, "dataYear": 2024, ... },
  "fiscalSolvency": { "fiscalBalanceGdpPct": -4.1, "govtDebtGdpPct": null, "dataYear": 2023, ... },
  "reerMisalignment": { "reerIndex": 98.4, "trailingAvg": 97.1, "overvaluationPct": 1.3, "latestYear": 2023, ... },
  "financialStress": { "nplPct": 4.1, "creditGdpPct": 51.2, "creditGdpGapPp": 2.1, "dataYear": 2023, ... },
  "politicalStability": { "politicalStabilityEst": -0.3, "ruleOfLawEst": -0.1, "dataYear": 2023, ... },

  // ── schema 15 — sovereign credit ratings (external benchmark, does not feed scores) ──
  "creditRatings": {
    "sp":     { "grade": "BB-",  "outlook": "Stable",   "asOf": "2026-04-08" },
    "moodys": { "grade": "Baa3", "outlook": "Stable",   "asOf": "2025-06-26" },
    "fitch":  { "grade": "BB+",  "outlook": "Stable",   "asOf": "2021-07-01" },
    "recentActions": [
      { "agency": "sp",     "date": "2026-04-08", "grade": "BB-",  "outlook": "Stable",   "change": "downgrade",      "sentence": "S&P downgraded to BB- (Stable) on 2026-04-08" },
      { "agency": "moodys", "date": "2025-06-26", "grade": "Baa3", "outlook": "Stable",   "change": "downgrade",      "sentence": "Moody's downgraded to Baa3 (Stable) on 2025-06-26" },
      { "agency": "sp",     "date": "2025-06-26", "grade": "BB",   "outlook": "Negative", "change": "downgrade",      "sentence": "S&P downgraded to BB (Negative) on 2025-06-26" },
      { "agency": "moodys", "date": "2024-06-27", "grade": "Baa2", "outlook": "Negative", "change": "outlook-change", "sentence": "Moody's changed to Baa2 (Negative) on 2024-06-27" }
    ],
    "dataAsOf": "2026-06-13",
    "source": { "name": "countryeconomy.com", "url": "https://countryeconomy.com/ratings/colombia" }
  },

  "delta":    { "sinceISO": "2026-06-05T...", "sinceRunAgeDays": 7, "verdictChange": null, "stressScoreDelta": 1.5, "firedCountDelta": 0, "signalChanges": [] },
  "warnings": []
}

crisis-scan returns the 7 records sorted by stressScore, most-stressed first (insufficient-data last).

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Known limitations / structural ceilings

• Uruguay BCU TCP-blocked. Banco Central del Uruguay's COPOM decision page is blocked at the TCP level from Apify datacenter IPs (the connection itself is refused, not an HTTP 403). This affects Uruguay's FX and policy-rate signals. A 180-day cache warms from the first run where the source is reachable (e.g. a local/residential run); the last-known rate is served within that window and disclosed in the rate's licenseNote. Beyond 180 days the signal goes unavailable. The BIS WS_CBPOL dataflow does not cover Uruguay.
• Argentina — no policy rate. BCRA abolished its formal Selic-equivalent policy tool under the Milei administration (2023–); no single machine-readable rate exists. realRate is unavailable for AR; the signal is added when a stable equivalent emerges.
• Mexico requires a Banxico API token. Set BANXICO_TOKEN as an actor secret in Apify Console. Without it, Mexico's FX signal and real-rate signal are both unavailable. The BIS WS_CBPOL policy-rate feed (used for Mexico's real-rate numerator) does not require the token — only the FX source (Banxico SIE) does.
• ⚠️ reserveDrawdown is currently unavailable for all 7 LatAm countries. The World Bank FI.RES.TOTL.CD series (the fallback since the IMF SDMX IL dataflow returned empty responses as of 2026-06-12) publishes annual year-end values with a ~1.5 year lag. As of mid-2026, the latest vintage is 2024-12-31 — which is ~528 days old, well past the 180-day freshness cutoff. The signal is correctly marked unavailable rather than serving stale data as live. The fix requires fresher sources: LatAm central banks (BCB, BanRep, BCRP, Banxico, etc.) publish monthly international reserves on their own sites — wiring those is the next step for this signal. Until that work is done, reserveDrawdown is structurally dark across the region. coverageLevel reflects this honestly (partial rather than full).
• Mexico's commodity signal is limited. Manufacturing accounts for ~80% of Mexico's exports; crude oil is ~6%. A global oil shock has a smaller terms-of-trade impact here than in Colombia or Peru. The signal is wired but will fire only on extreme moves.
• Chile's lithium component is currently null. The Pink Sheet does not carry a lithium price series. The plan is to fetch BCCh BDE series F019.PPB.PRE.37.D ($/kg daily, LME-benchmarked), but that fetcher is not yet implemented. Chile's commodity signal runs on copper alone until it is.
• Commodity dependence is a structural weight, not a live figure. The export-share percentages (OEC 2023) are slow-moving structural ratios surfaced with their dataYear, not a real-time datum. The commodity price is live; the weight is structural.
• One computable signal is never a verdict. A country with only one usable signal is insufficient-data (and stressScore: null) regardless of whether that signal fired — a single axis is not enough to call macro stress.
• dataCoherence and compoundFlags are context, not overrides. They never change the categorical fired count or verdict.
• Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay have no national CPI source in this actor — inflation is gap-filled from the IMF CPI dataflow (attributed, derived YoY/MoM).

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Sources & licensing

This actor aggregates official sources, each attributed on every record:

• FX — national central banks: BCRA (AR), BCB (BR), Banco Central de Chile via mindicador.cl (CL), TRM Colombia / SFC (CO), Banxico (MX), BCRP (PE), BCU (UY). All open government data.
• Inflation — INDEC (AR), IBGE SIDRA IPCA (BR); IMF CPI dataflow for CL, CO, MX, PE, UY (attributed; derived YoY/MoM — not bulk redistribution).
• Commodity — World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), CC BY 4.0. Export-dependence weights from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC 2023). Chile lithium (BCCh BDE) is defined in the basket but the fetcher is not yet implemented — Chile runs on copper alone currently.
• Policy rates — BCB SGS series 432 / Selic (BR), mindicador.cl TPM (CL), BIS WS_CBPOL (CO, MX, PE — public use), BCU COPOM (UY — cache). AR not covered (tool abolished).
• Official reserves — World Bank FI.RES.TOTL.CD (total reserves including gold, annual, CC BY 4.0). Currently unavailable for signal computation (data is ~528 days old, beyond the 180-day cutoff). Next step: wire monthly central-bank reserve publications directly.
• Structural vulnerability — World Bank World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0): external debt, debt service, import cover, current account, fiscal balance, government debt, NPL ratio, domestic credit, REER. World Bank WGI (CC BY 4.0): Political Stability & Absence of Violence, Rule of Law.

Data is delayed and presented with attribution. It is analysis built on public official data, not a redistribution product.

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Notes

• Not investment advice. A transparent screening tool; the signals and thresholds are documented judgements, not a forecast.
• No residential proxy needed for most sources. All LatAm central-bank FX endpoints are reachable from Apify datacenter IPs — except BCU Uruguay (TCP-blocked at the firewall level). A residential proxy would restore UY but is not required for the other 6 countries.
• Schedule weekly or monthly; the underlying data refreshes daily (FX) to monthly (CPI/commodity).
• Shared scraping/parsing logic is imported from the internal fx-core / inflation-core / commodity-core libraries (no actor-to-actor calls).