We suggest a new approach to estimating financial cycles, as interactions of real-sector and financial-sector sentiments. We apply this to the U.S. financial indicators over 1973-2014. Based on financial cycle concepts of Schumpeter and Minsky, we motivate the selection of six indicators which capture finance-real sector linkages: the slope of the yield curve, a Purchasing Managers' Index, real estate price returns, the S&P stock price index and leverage ratios of households and non-financial corporations. We estimate lead-lag relations and apply principal component analysis on aligned series to construct factors. We find that two factors, capturing corporate and household sentiments, account for over 60% of the cumulative variance in our data. Corporate optimism peaks before crisis episodes while households' sentiment is more persistent and follows with a lag corporate semtiment.