> How is this possible? What data, metrics, tools, do you have that shows an increase in risk other than a basic "intuition"? That's my point - if such a tool did exist to the common person (as you suggest, the techie in SV who isn't saving), financial institutions would be all over that. They aren't (but they claim to be).

The challenge is not finding data; the challenge is identifying which data is truly important and allowing yourself to make objective decisions based on the data.

I'll give you a simple example: I am currently short JC Penney through options. Before I took my positions, one of the things I noted was a divergence between what the equities market was saying about the company's prospects and what the credit market was saying about the company's prospects. The credit market was notably more pessimistic about the company's position at the time (obviously measured by the risk of JC Penney defaulting on its debt), and now you see the equities market catching up.

From what I can tell, a lot of folks in Silicon Valley don't even want to look at data. Startups with little to no revenue raising million-plus convertible notes with $5-15 million caps and sub-5% interest rates? And some of them have already raised capital? That's a data point that makes junk bonds yielding 7% look good by comparison.