What is the best economic indicator?
Economic predictions are notorious bad. So this post I will talk about one economic indicator that is less known but not too shabby. Do not take stock market advice or make commodity trades based on this indicator, but it does work.
Many people look at the ‘dry Baltic index’ or an index of raw materials moved by sea ( personally think this is a very respectable index). Other people look at an aggregate index of economic indicators. Some people look at the trend and say if the index for three months is up or down we have a trend. I will tell you in this post which economic indicator I think is the best.
Economic indicators that do not work
Economic indicators that do not work include, astrology, and psychics, but also Fibonacci’s numbers and Elliott waves and maybe worst of all is the news, CNN, etc. In fact, there was one study that showed news to be wrong about the economy, pretty predictable almost as a counter indicator.
More things that do not work, Warren Buffet and George Soros. Really, I think they made money but can not predict the economy. Experts are people who were good at making money at a point in time, but they are not predictors. Economists do O.K. if you aggregate them. The Big Mac index is certainly no worse.
Girls dress length as an Economic predictor
One of my personal favorites is to look at the way women dress. The more conservative girls look, this indicates hard economic time ahead, the more liberal this means good economic times ahead. You can tell your girlfriend if she catches you looking at another girl that you are looking at her for purely economic reasons.
Girls make consumer purchases and really run the day to day finances of the household. Women are more practical than a man in many ways. This might be connected to their need to make a home safe for offspring. This is a deep instinctual knowing, programmed into them for millions of years. Therefore, I have reasonable trust in their ability to predict the economy on a subconscious level.
So what is the best economic indicator, especially leading economic indicator
This might be cliche and disappoint you, but here it is in my observation, turning off the news and tuning out the experts. The best economic indicator is you. Take a look around you, and ask yourself, how does it look? Are people buying foofy items or basic stuff? And related to the above, are girls wearing nice items or cheap cosmetics. Look more at what people are buying than just some raw number of sales etc. What is their dress length?
Look at what type of purchases people are making, including yourself. However, also, are the shopping mall parking lots full? I heard many Americans say ‘its so bad here’, while I asked them what they did this weekend, they said ‘shopping, it was exhausting because the parking lots were full.’
Real hardship was WWII or the great depression, not media-generated hype. I am an American living in Poland so lucky for me I am not exposed to toxic media hype about the economy. I can observe rather than listen to other people’s opinions. Use your own brain and observations to determine where the economy is headed.
Experts and news are statistically wrong. Your own observation is the best economic indicator. And please look at women’s dress lengths and tell me what you think, one economist to another.
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