Is The Recovery Slowing Down?
We have heard about the so called economic recovery for months now and while it is true that markets are higher we have our doubts that any of this optimism is seeping into the real economy. Because of this we tend to believe that we are headed for a double dip recession, assuming that we ever got out of the first one.
Lately we have started to see renewed signs of a downturn in some of the economic indicators that we follow. All things employment have been bad with the unemployment rate, exhaustion rate, and unemployment 27 weeks or longer rates up. Anyone that is seeing an upturn in employment must be on an acid trip as there are no signs of anything but more unemployment. Just Wednesday we had housing starts come in lower than expected. One indicator that we follow is the Citi Economic Surprise Index. They have them for all of the G-10 nations and it does a good job of showing if economic numbers are doing better or worse than expected. As you can see in the chart below the index is turning over in both the United States as well as the G-10 indexes. (Click on chart twice to enlarge)
Citi Economic Surprise Index
Happy Trading,
Disclaimer-The Macro Trader is actually long various indexes but since he’s negative on the economy is looking to lighten up on the first signs of weakness.
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Title: Is The Recovery Slowing Down?
URL: http://www.themacrotrader.com/2009/11/19/slowing-economic-recovery/
