Are We Near a Recession? “The leading index for each state predicts the six-month growth rate of the state’s coincident index. In addition to the coincident index, the models include other variables that lead the economy: state-level housing permits (1 to 4 units), state initial unemployment insurance claims, delivery times from the Institute for Supply…
Visualizing How Americans Spend Their Money The Consumer Expenditure Survey is a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey that collects information on the buying habits of U.S. consumers. Image: howmuch.net
Can History Help Us Predict the Future of the S&P 500? When the S&P 500 hits all-time high and AAII Investor Sentiment Survey bulls is below 35%, then 88% of the time the S&P 500 is positive one year later (1986-2019). Image: SentimenTrader
How’s the U.S. Economy Doing Now? The real GDP Nowcast relies on soft data such as consumer and business surveys and hard data such as retail sales and industrial production. It forecasts the growth of real GDP. At full employment, GDP returns to the level of potential GDP. If a recession were to occur today,…