The traditional method for recession forecasting is to find an economic indicator or composite index that has a high correlation and adequately responds in advance to economic expansion or contraction. One then de-trends this indicator by taking a growth rate (straight or smoothed) over x-months and plotting that on a chart. When this growth rate […]

At the end of September 2011, ECRI made a recession call which left the impression recession was imminent. With a track record like theirs there was very little challenging argument. Two days later, the S&P-500 bottomed and rose and incredible 22% since. In December 2011, ECRI “dialled down” their call to “within 9 months”. Just […]

This article was co-authored with Georg Vrba and first appeared on the popular Advisor Perspectives web site on 17 January 2012 In our last article on using the ECRI WLI, we described how best to use the growth figure of the Economic  Cycle Research Institute’s Weekly Leading Index (WLI) to predict recessions,  but we also highlighted […]

In September 2011, the Economic Cycle Research Institute  proclaimed a new U.S recession would begin sometime in the coming year. ECRI  based its prediction on a host of its own internal long-leading indexes,  together with its widely followed weekly leading index (WLI). I do not wish to debate the merits of ECRI’s recession call  here […]