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Recession or Slowdown: What Do the Numbers Say?

by: William Trent June 26, 2007 | about stocks: SPY    
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The Chicago Fed Data is continuing to suggest (pdf file) that the economy is slowing down.

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index [CFNAI] was –0.22 in May, up from –0.30 in April. All four broad categories of indicators made negative contributions to the index in May. However, in May, contributions from three categories - employment,housing and consumption,and sales, orders, and inventories - improved in May over April.

click to enlarge
CFNAI Chart

The pace of economic activity is in line with a slowdown more so than a recession, at least for now. I am also going to try a new format for trying to classify all of the economic data points as they come in. This will be a work in progress for some time, and I would appreciate suggestions for improvement. As the list fills out, it may help to give a picture of how the overall trends are running.

Economic Data

All suggestions are welcome.

William Trent

William Trent

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This article has 4 comments:

  •  
    Jun 26 10:03 AM
    Thanks for the pointer to the Chicago Fed report and the activity index chart. On your classification chart, including a link to the underlying report or data source would be useful. I think the format with four categories of indicators is good.
    Reply
  •  
    Jun 26 10:06 AM
    Not a bad idea (when I can figure out how to do it.) Right now the classification chart is an image from an Excel file, rather than an editable table within the post.
    Reply
  •  
    Jun 26 06:56 PM
    Perhaps just footnote (below the image, not on it) the reports that are represented on the image.
    Reply
  •  
    Jun 26 09:24 PM
    Thanks for the idea. If I get too many reports that may be unwieldy, though. One idea I had was to do this as a weekly update, which maybe would allow the footnotes (for that week) not to be too long. I could still update important data as it happens, but reference the more minor reports in the weekly wrapup. Would that work?
    Reply
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