Leading Indicators

[Guest]

imported post

Great now they are going to fiddle with these numbers too:

Revisions in U.S. Leading Indicators

The July 2005 release will incorporate two major revisions to the composite index of economic indicators (LEI): 1) a new method for calculating the contribution of the yield spread in the LEI and 2) a trend adjustment to the LEI. The new measure of the yield spread improves the performance of the LEI by better reflecting the way the yield spread anticipates cyclical economic turning points. The trend adjustment facilitates interpretation and use of the LEI.

Would be better if the just used a dart board or flipped a coin instead of this massaging of the data - IMHO. The data is the data why does it have to be massaged????

 

[Guest]

imported post

The board's index of leading indicators dropped 0.5% in May. Nine out of the ten leading indicators fell in the month.

The decline was larger expected. The consensus forecast of Wall Street economists had expected a 0.2 percent fall.

This is the fifth straight month without an increase in the leading index.

In April, the index was revised to show no change compared with the initial estimate of a 0.2% decline.

The coincident index rose 0.2%, while the lagging index rose 0.3%.

The leading index has now declined at a 2.2% annual rate over the last six months. It has declined by 1.9% over the last 12 months.

About half of the decline in the leading index over the past year has been due to the flattening interest rate spread. The other half has been the result of the drop in vendor performance.

 

[James48843]

Re: imported post

Note-

I will be curious as to the August General Motors sales figures.

When July came out three week ago- it was pretty bloody. and showed a fairly large drop in GM car and truck sales.

Falling car sales is usually an early leading indicator when the economy begins to hiccup.

Here is July's numbers for GM:



August numbers should be published later next week- maybe thursday.

If the downward slide continues, the stock market could take exception to data like this.