We post occasional thoughts and interesting observations about our U.S recession forecasting methodologies on this blog. To see all the posts on a single page, click here.
Reflections
Atypical Global Recovery underway
Download article as PDF Since we last reported on the current Global Recession, the Global Leading Economic Indicator (GLEI) rose for the month of March, but is following an atypical growth pattern coming out of recession, with a slope far shallower than the normal expected rebound. Also noteworthy this month is that the percentage of [...]
World Recession Update – Apr 2013
Download article as PDF EXTERNAL PUBLISHERS PLEASE NOTE : You may republish up to and including the first 3 charts of this report (encompassing 65% of the report) and link to this page for your readers to complete the rest of the article. The following charts and text are an extraction from our monthly Global [...]
Fragile global bottoming or double-dip in progress?
Download article as PDF Our prior post titled “World Recession Update” depicted the percentage of 41 countries tracked around the globe that were printing 1 or 2 consecutive negative quarters of GDP growth. It is easy to view the data presented and come to the alarming conclusion the world is accelerating into an ever-deepening recession [...]
World Recession Update
Download article as PDF We have quarterly GDP data for 11 more OECD countries since our last post “World plunges into recession in Q42012“, and there have been some 2nd estimate revisions (such as the U.S). The chart below shows an improvement over the last post we made with the inclusion of more data points, [...]
World plunges into recession in Q42012
Download article as PDF With the disappointing initial GDP releases for Q42012 from Europe out, the “world” as defined by 41 OECD countries across the globe, has plunged into recession. We define “recession” through two alternative definitions for our comparison, either the presence of a single negative quarter-on-quarter growth or the more traditional two consecutive negative quarterly growths. Whichever way you [...]
Personal Incomes to decline sharply for January
Download article as PDF Personal Incomes, less Transfer Payments and deflated by Personal Consumption Expenditures, is used as one of the four co-incident components of the NBER Recession Model. There was a huge jump in this indicator for the months of November and December 2012 quite possibly as a result of incomes being pulled forward as [...]
Coincident data not playing nice with the bears
Download article as PDF Over the last two months we had Real Retail Sales, Industrial Production, Personal Incomes and Non-Farm payrolls all pushing new expansion highs. The only data not in for December now is Real Incomes. In addition we have noted upward revisions as opposed to the downward revisions promised by the recession-is-here camp. [...]
Launch of new Recession Analytics Tool
Download article as PDF We are pleased to announce the revamp of our historical time-series data file, which is published quarterly, with the following new additions: Addition of Labor Market Index historical data Addition of Long Leading Index historical data New analytic tool & charting visualisations Switch from quarterly to monthly publication The first two items are [...]
100% Recession risks – a follow on
Download article as PDF Professor Piger updated his recession probability model that caused so much attention early November (See “Debunking 100% probability of recession“). As we forecast last month, the probability index undertook a “revision” of epic proportions as displayed below (01-Dec-12 vintage): This is a classic real-world rendition as to why you cannot make [...]
On the cliff’s edge
Download article as PDF Industrial Production was slowed by hurricane Sandy and its growth rate is now in recession territory. Bear in mind, for our “NBER Recession Model of last resort” we use a much faster smoothed growth here than the standard 12-month rate of change and therefore many other studies you observe on Industrial [...]
Debunking 100% probabilities of recession calls
Download article as PDF The latest buzz on the internet is a FRED chart published by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis of Chauvet and Piger’s dynamic factor Markov recession probability index. Its currently jumped from less than 1% to 18%. Inferences are being made that recessions have always been underway or occurred very shortly [...]
On the brink of Global Recession
Download article as PDF The Global Economy is on the brink of a recession with 58% of 29 OECD countries experiencing business cycle contractions. The chart below shows OECD defined global contractions (grey shaded areas) together with the percentage of 29 OECD member countries experiencing slowdowns. It is evident that whenever 50% or more of [...]
Retail sales data not supportive of recession
Download article as PDF The September RETAIL SALES component (RSAFS) of the NBER Recession Model was in today. It surprised to the upside as well as had an upward revision on the prior month. For the most part, this series has been revised downwards over time of late, but this does not necessarily equate to [...]
50 State Co-incident update : No Recession
Download article as PDF A while back we published an interesting project (Predicting US Recessions with State co-incident data) to see if we could get some advance recession warning from the co-incident indices of the 50 US states. We built a composite economic index of 50 U.S states as published by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, [...]
CFNAI- revisions and recessions
Download article as PDF The latest CFNAI-MA3 reading came in at -0.47 from last weeks -0.26 (revised down from -0.21). This downward jump (and downward revision) naturally has everyone on edge. We are not yet concerned with this reading as it is not being corroborated by any leading indicators. However with the perma-bears now being [...]
Judging Recession Forecasting Accuracy
Download article as PDF In August 2011, ECRI declared a recession was upon us. If you spend enough time examining their initial proclamations it was literally that a recession was imminent, saying “It’s either just begun, or it’s right in front of us.” Subsequently they revised their call, saying the recession would hit “by mid year” 2012. At [...]
Here we go again…
Download article as PDF WE DON’T SEE IMMINENT RECESSION & NEITHER SHOULD THE NBER We find ourselves in the 3rd “summer slowdown scare”, just like 2010 and in August 2011. During this time the perma-bears crank up the alarm bells and we are bombarded with a cacophony of ill tidings that spell the doom of [...]
On standby for a Great Trough
Download article as PDF 13 June 2012 UPDATE: This Great Trough is not done yet, we may well re-test prior lows in the bottom-making process. The breadth- index head-faked and fell below 26% yesterday meaning the countdown timer will be reset. We now await for the index to rise above 26 again and attempt a second strike [...]
Can the U.S skirt global recession?
Download article as PDF With many parts of the Euro-zone entering or already in recession, and the OECD recently putting Australia, Germany and Italy into recession, one has to wonder if the feeble U.S recovery can skirt a global recession. Many mainstream pundits have been pointing to countries around the globe slipping into recession as a reason [...]
ECRI WLI Growth Conundrum
Download article as PDF More recently, ECRI has switched from the use of smoothed 6-month growth rates (as calculated by their WLIg growth metric) to annual (52-week) growth numbers of its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) to prop up a recession scenario. The reason cited is “…a widespread seasonal adjustment problem that economists have known about for some time.” [...]
Archives
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- June 2012 (3)
- May 2012 (1)
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- March 2012 (4)
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- October 2011 (1)
