The Brave-Butters-Kelley monthly GDP figures for June are out. Here’s how the series’ growth rates compare to the SPGMI (formerly IHS/Markit) monthly GDP and the Philadelphia Fed Coincidence Index (which is supposed to track GDP).
figure 1: Month-over-month GDP annualized growth from SPGMI (blue), Brave-Butters-Kelley (tan), and Philadelphia Fed Coincident Index (green). Sources: SPGMI (9/1), Indiana University via FRED (9/5) and Philadelphia Fed (8/25) and authors’ calculations.
informal discuss Backgammon is here.
The preceding indicators are retrospective indicators (for the monthly series followed by NBER’s BCDC see this 9/1 post).Even Lewis Mertens Stock Weekly Economic Indicators Week ended August 26 1.96% is look-behind.
The BBK leading indicator was in positive territory at 1.2 in July. Thatb implies that real GDP growth is expected to be 1.2 standard deviations above trend. This is in stark contrast to the Conference Board’s July LEI (a combination of financial, actual and expected indicators), which fell in July and has been signaling a recession for months.
