US M2 Money Supply (M2SL)
US M2 money supply in USD billions from January 1959 to the latest monthly release. M2 is the broadest of the standard US monetary aggregates and the most-watched proxy for global USD liquidity. Bitcoin and US equities both track M2 expansion and contraction phases closely. The COVID-era M2 surge (about 40 percent in two years) preceded the 2021 risk-asset top; the 2022-2023 contraction, the first year-on-year decline since the series began in 1959, coincided with the 2022 bear market. Refreshed from FRED twice a day, with recession shading.
Latest reading: US M2 money supply was US$23.34 trillion in August 2026 (latest FRED monthly release), up 5.7 percent year on year.
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Monthly US M2 money supply (M2SL) in USD billions on a log scale. Grey-shaded bars mark NBER-dated recessions from 2001. Hover for the exact monthly value. Log scale because M2 has grown about 5x since 2000 and far more since 1959, so a linear chart would flatten the early data.
What is M2?
M2 is one of the standard monetary aggregates the Federal Reserve tracks to measure the total stock of money in the US economy. Going from narrowest to broadest:
- M0 (monetary base). Physical currency in circulation plus bank reserves held at the Fed. The narrowest definition.
- M1. M0 plus demand deposits, traveller's cheques, and other checkable deposits. The most-liquid public money supply.
- M2. M1 plus savings deposits, money-market deposit accounts, retail money-market funds, and small-denomination time deposits under $100,000. The standard "broad money" measure.
- M3. M2 plus institutional money funds and large time deposits. The Fed stopped publishing M3 in 2006.
M2 captures most of what the public and non-financial businesses can move into the spending stream without much friction. It is published monthly in the Fed's H.6 statistical release; FRED carries the seasonally adjusted monthly series as M2SL.
Why AU traders watch US M2
- Global liquidity proxy. US M2 is one of the largest pools of broad money, alongside China, the euro area and Japan. The directional signal in US M2 closely tracks "global M2" (US + China + Eurozone + Japan), which is what crypto and risk-asset traders ultimately care about. When US M2 expands, global M2 typically expands; when US M2 stagnates or contracts, the global picture usually follows.
- AUD/USD pressure. Sustained M2 expansion (rate of growth above nominal GDP growth) is mildly USD-bearish at the margin, supportive of AUD/USD via the USD-weakness channel. The 2021 AUD/USD strength coincided with peak M2 growth; the 2022 AUD/USD weakness coincided with the M2 contraction.
- BTC + ASX 200 regime. M2 growth above roughly 7 percent has tended to coincide with strong returns in both BTC AUD and the ASX 200. M2 growth below about 3 percent, or contracting, has coincided with drawdowns in both. Use M2 trajectory as a regime-defining variable for position sizing.
M2 vs Bitcoin correlation
| M2 phase | Dates | M2 growth | BTC AUD outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steady expansion | 2014-2019 | ~5.6% YoY avg (3.2% to 7.3%) | 2017 bull, 2018 bear, range-bound 2019 |
| COVID surge | Mar 2020 - Mar 2022 | +41% from Feb 2020 to the Mar 2022 peak (YoY high 26.8%, Feb 2021) | Bull market; BTC AUD up more than twelvefold from the Mar 2020 low to the Nov 2021 high |
| Contraction | Apr 2022 - Feb 2024 | -4.6% YoY trough (Apr 2023) | Bear market 2022, slow recovery 2023 |
| Resumption | Mar 2024 onwards | +0.1% rising to +5.7% YoY (through Aug 2026) | Cycle 2024-2026 (current) |
Analysts who track this relationship often cite a lag of roughly two to three months from an M2 turn to a BTC turn, though the relationship is noisy on shorter timeframes. M2 should be used as a regime variable on a multi-month horizon, not a trade-timing signal.
Methodology
- Source. FRED series ID M2SL (seasonally adjusted monthly).
- Endpoint.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=M2SL(public CSV, no API key required). - Recession shading. NBER-dated US recessions from 2001 onwards: 2001 dotcom, 2007-09 GFC, 2020 COVID. Earlier recessions are not shaded.
- Log scale. M2 has grown roughly 5x since January 2000 (and much more since 1959), and a linear chart compresses the early decades. The log scale shows constant-growth-rate periods as straight lines.
- Refresh cadence. An automated cloud refresh pulls the series from FRED twice a day (07:30 and 13:30 Sydney time) and the site rebuilds when the data changes. If FRED is unreachable, the last good data is kept.
Data source and download (FRED CSV)
The chart on this page reads the St. Louis Fed FRED public CSV endpoint, refreshed twice a day. The same endpoint works in a browser, Google Sheets, Excel, or any script. No API key, no registration, full history from the series start.
| Series | FRED ID | CSV endpoint |
|---|---|---|
| M2 monthly, seasonally adjusted (this chart) | M2SL | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=M2SL |
| M2 weekly, not seasonally adjusted | WM2NS | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=WM2NS |
| M2 velocity, quarterly | M2V | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=M2V |
| Real M2, inflation-adjusted | M2REAL | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=M2REAL |
To pull the series into Google Sheets: =IMPORTDATA("https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=M2SL"). In Python: pandas.read_csv("https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=M2SL"). The CSV returns two columns, observation date and value, one row per period. Swap the id= parameter for any other FRED series ID; the endpoint pattern is identical across the whole FRED catalogue.
Related tools
- M2 YoY % - the growth-rate view; spots inflection points faster than the level view.
- Fed Funds Rate - the policy rate that drives M2 expansion / contraction.
- Fed Balance Sheet (WALCL) - the quantity side of Fed liquidity provision.
- CPI Inflation - the consumer-price side of M2 transmission.
- Bitcoin Log Regression (AUD) - the BTC cycle structure M2 helps explain.
Frequently asked questions
US M2 money supply was US$23.34 trillion in August 2026 (latest FRED monthly release), up 5.7 percent year on year.
M2 (FRED series M2SL) measures the total stock of money in the US economy. It includes M1 (currency in circulation plus demand and checkable deposits) plus savings deposits, retail money-market funds, and small-denomination time deposits. M2 captures most of the money the US public and businesses can readily spend or move into the spending stream. The Federal Reserve publishes monthly seasonally adjusted M2 figures via the H.6 statistical release.
M2 is the most direct measure of total USD liquidity available to chase financial assets. Popular analyses find Bitcoin tracks global M2 (US + China + euro area + Japan combined) with a lag of roughly two to three months, though the fit is loose. The COVID-era surge from $15.5T (February 2020) to $21.8T (March 2022), about 41 percent, provided the liquidity backdrop for the 2021 BTC cycle peak. The 2022-2023 contraction, the first year-on-year decline since the series began in 1959, coincided with the 2022 BTC bear market low. Most macro-aware crypto investors use M2 trajectory as a regime-defining variable.
Three channels. (1) AUD/USD: M2 expansion is generally USD-bearish at the margin, supportive of AUD/USD via the USD-weakness channel. (2) Risk-asset positioning: M2 growth above about 7 percent has tended to coincide with strong BTC and ASX 200 returns; M2 contraction has coincided with drawdowns in both. (3) Capital flows into AU: Australian-listed crypto ETFs and ASX growth stocks tend to attract foreign inflows when US M2 is expanding and global risk appetite is elevated.
Not in the Fed's modern M2 series, which starts in 1959: year-on-year growth never went negative until December 2022. The 2022-2023 contraction (bottoming at minus 4.6 percent year-over-year in April 2023) triggered widespread commentary that the Fed was running policy too tight. The M2 level bottomed in October 2023 as the Fed paused hiking and bank deposit flight stabilised, and year-on-year growth turned positive again in March 2024. M2 regained its March 2022 peak in May 2025. In August 2026 it was growing 5.66 percent year on year.
M2 is the stock of money. M2V is the velocity of money: GDP divided by M2, measuring how many times each dollar in M2 changes hands in a year. M2 expansion with falling M2V (the 2020-2022 backdrop) generates asset-price inflation but limited goods-price inflation initially. M2 contraction or stagnation with rising velocity (the late-2022 backdrop) generates the opposite: goods-price disinflation but asset-price pressure. The 'inflation regime' question is really an M2 stock vs flow vs velocity question rather than a single-variable story.
Yes. FRED series M2SL is the seasonally adjusted monthly M2 stock as published in the Fed's H.6 statistical release. Weekly non-seasonally-adjusted figures are available as WM2NS. The chart on this page uses M2SL for the cleaner monthly seasonally adjusted view, which is the version most macro research and most central-bank policy commentary references.
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