Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Industrial Production: why, if you're not already, you should be reading "Weekly Indicators"


 - by New Deal democrat

For the last month, I have been saying, based on the "Weekly Indicators" of poor rail transport and steel production, that March Industrial Production was likely to be poor.  And this morning, we found out just how poor: down -0.6%.  It is not down over -1% from its peak in November 2014.

Yesterday March retail sales were reported to have increased, also as forecast by the "Weekly Indicators" of  stable YoY comparisons in the Johnson Redbook and Gallup Daily Consumer spending.  Still, sales are the second of the 4 big coincident indicators of economic growth vs. contraction to have failed to exceed their November peaks.

But if you have been reading my "Weekly Indicator" columns over at XE.com, you already knew that.  If you haven't, well, you should.