Total Consumer Loans and Leases Owned and Securitized by Finance Companies, Level (DTCTHFNM) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

Rows: 1,004
Columns: 2
Data range: 1943-01-01 to 2026-08-01
Auto-refresh: Re-checks its source every 14 days
Last refreshed with new data: 2026-10-31

Graph and download economic data for Total Consumer Loans and Leases Owned and Securitized by Finance Companies, Level (DTCTHFNM) from Jan 1943 to Apr 2026 about securitized, owned, finance companies, leases, companies, finance, financial, loans, consumer, and USA.

AI analysis

Data Analysis: Total Consumer Loans and Leases Owned and Securitized by Finance Companies (DTCTHFNM)

1. Dataset Overview and Value

This series, sourced from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (via fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=DTCTHFNM), tracks the level of consumer loans and leases held or securitized by finance companies in the United States. The FRED/API sourcing indicates a highly authoritative, regularly maintained government-adjacent publisher, and the time coverage — January 1943 through April 2026 — signals this is an actively updated series with forward-dated placeholder values (likely reflecting scheduled release cadence rather than actual future observations). With over 80 years of monthly history, this dataset is valuable for long-run macroeconomic correlation studies, particularly around consumer credit cycles, recessions, and shifts in lending/securitization practices.

2. Data Quality Observations

Quality signals here are strong: across both columns, zero null cells were found in 1,000 ingested rows, and the join-key column (observationdate) shows zero nulls with full distinct values (1,000 distinct dates for 1,000 rows) — confirming no duplicate timestamps at the row level. Duplicate-row computation is still pending (Phase D/Parquet recheck), so that should be verified before final use, but no other structural issues are apparent. One minor note: the value column DTCTHFNM has 991 distinct values against 1,000 rows, meaning ~9 repeated values — plausible for a slow-moving economic series with flat periods, not a quality concern.

3. Key Column Distributions

The value column DTCTHFNM (Decimal) ranges from a minimum of 728 to a maximum of 949,306, with a mean of 297,267 but a much lower median of 93,175 — a large mean-median gap alongside a positive skew of 0.753, indicating a right-skewed distribution. This is typical of economic level series that grow substantially over time (small values in earlier decades, large values in recent decades). The interquartile spread is wide (Q1 = 19,194.5, Q3 = 711,486), reinforcing that this is a non-stationary, trending series rather than one clustered around a central value — a critical consideration for correlation work, which should likely use log-transformed or differenced/growth-rate values rather than raw levels to avoid spurious correlation driven by shared trends.

4. Recommended Join Keys

The clear join key is observationdate, given it is complete (zero nulls), fully distinct, and spans a long, granular monthly time range (1943–2026). This makes it ideal for merging with other FRED time series or macroeconomic datasets on a date basis — recommend aligning to month-start or resampling to quarterly/annual frequency depending on the comparison series' native frequency.

5. Suggested Companion Datasets

Good candidates for correlation analysis include: (a) consumer credit and household debt series (e.g., FRED's TOTALSL, DTCTHFNS for owned-only breakdown), (b) interest rate series (federal funds rate, prime rate) to study credit sensitivity to monetary policy, (c) macro indicators like unemployment rate (UNRATE) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) to explore consumer credit's relationship with economic health, (d) auto sales and retail sales data given finance companies' heavy exposure to auto/equipment leasing, and (e) securitization market indicators (ABS issuance volumes) to examine the "securitized" component's correlation with broader credit market liquidity trends.

Columns

observation_date (date)
DTCTHFNM (decimal)