Viewpoints

The construction of the leading indicators has many flaws, but one of the more visible and bigger ones is the three series for new manufacturing orders. The leading index includes two dollar-based new orders series and one diffusion measure. A diffusion measure captures the breath of change, not the magnitude of change. In other words, it does not distinguish between the size of the gain or decline. Yet, dollar-based series are more important in determining economic growth since the economy runs on dollars spent.

In May, the leading index fell 0.7%. The ISM new orders index posted the most significant decline (1.4%) of any indicator, overwhelming the small gain in the other two order series (0.1% and 0.2%, respectively).

Today, the Census Bureau reported that new orders for durable goods, a dollar-based series, rose 1.8% in May. And excluding the volatile transportation sector, new orders rose 0.6%. The latest data will result in an upward revision to the dollar-based series in the leading index, but not enough to wipe out the negative contribution of the ISM New orders index.

How can anyone trust the signal from the index of leading indicators when the dollar-based new orders for durable manufactured goods (excluding transportation) posted in May, their most significant gain in over a year, and yet the sum of the three orders series in the leading index is negative because of a sharp decline in diffusion-based series? The economy runs on dollars.

The year-over-year change in the All-Items CPI for May 2023 was 4.13%. My forecast is that the year-over-year change in the All-Items CPI for June 2023 will be less than 4.13%. Barring revisions, the seasonally-adjusted month-to-month percent change in the June CPI would have to be 1.19% non annualized for the year-over-year change in the June All-Items CPI to be equal to May’s 4.13%. Coincidentally (I think), the last time the month-to-month non-annualized change in the CPI was as high as 1.19% was June 2022, when it was exactly 1.19%. If the June 2023 All-Items CPI increases by 0.55% (non-annualized), the average non-annualized percent change in the CPI in the three months ended May 2023, the June 2023 year-over-year change in the CPI would slow to 3.47% vs. May’s 4.13%.

This is not economics. Rather, it is arithmetic. And it is all about that June 2022 base. (It took me a while, but I got there.) Plotted in Chart 1 are the month-to-month annualized percent changes in the All-Items CPI (the blue bars) along with the monthly observations of the year-over-year percent changes in the All-Items CPI (the red line). The June 2022 CPI increased a whopping annualized 15.22%. The June 2022 level of the CPI is the base for the June 2023 year-over-year percent change observation. With such a high June 2022 base, the bias is for a slowing in the year-over-year percent change in June 2023. The year-over-year percent changes in the All-Items CPI beyond June 2023 are not likely to slow as much because the high June 2022 base will drop out of the calculation. However, in the 11 months ended May 2023, the All-Items CPI has increased an annualized 3.17%. So, barring some negative supply shock in the remainder of 2023, the year-over-year change in the December 2023 All-Items CPI is likely to be much lower than the 6.44% for December 2022. For example if the CPI increases a non-annualized 0.3% from June through December 2023, the December 2023 year-over-year change in the All-Items CPI would be 3.59%. I believe that the monthly non-annualized changes in the All-Items CPI will, on average, be less than 0.3%. Thus, I believe that the year-over-year change in CPI as of December 2023 will be less than 3.59%.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s state coincident indexes in May increased in from April in all but 3 states (Rhode Island, Minnesota, and Kentucky). Vermont and Massachusetts were again the leaders, and the only states with increases above 1 percent, but unlike in April Massachusetts took the top spot. These two were also the states with the largest 3-month increases (Massachusetts was up by close to 4 percent). However, a full 23 states had increases over this horizon of less than 1 percent (Rhode Island’s was barely positive). Over the past 12 months, Massachusetts was yet again the leader, with an increase of over 6 percent, perhaps some consolation for the Celtics’ fadeout in the NBA playoffs. Texas was a fairly distant second. Kansas and Missouri had increases of less than 1 percent.

The independently estimated national figures of growth over the last 3 months (.78 percent) looks roughly in line, though perhaps a bit short, of what the state figures suggest, while the corresponding 12-month result (3.65 percent) looks like it might be somewhat stronger than the state numbers.

A research paper by the staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (1993) claims that the composite index of leading economic indicators does not provide "reliable advance information on the direction of the economy." Other studies have found that nearly half of the cyclical peak predictions in composite indexes of leading indicators were false signals.

The key takeaway from these studies, and others, is that the forecasting record of the composite index of cyclical indicators is not 100% accurate because the group of leading indicators that accurately predicted one cycle might not work in the next. In other words, as the economy moves from one business cycle to the next, the economy changes, as does the policy structure, and some indicators become obsolete and less reliable while others gain more predictive power.

Forty percent of the economic series that comprised the leading index in the 1980s and 1990s, when the Dallas Fed paper was researched, are no longer included. Change is a recurring feature of the leading economic indicators. In the 2000s, a new way of measuring the Treasury yield curve became part of the index. After the financial crisis of 2007-09, the redesigned leading economic index included a leading credit series and the ISM new orders series, removing broad money and vendor performance.

It's too early to conclude confidently that the current composite index of leading indicators sends accurate or false signals. But the performance of several indicators needs to be examined to avoid a wrong prediction.

For example, the current leading indicators index includes three new manufacturing order series. That construction is not ideal as it is best to have indicators covering a wide range of activities and sectors to avoid the intercorrelation between economic indicators.

Also, the current economic cycle has had unique features for the goods sector. Once the economy re-opened following the closures of businesses during the pandemic, there was a record surge in demand, especially for goods, driven by pent-up demand and unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus. Yet, firms could only respond slowly due to part shortages and supply chain bottlenecks. That forced firms to double and even triple ordering, resulting in the most significant (record) gains for manufactured consumer goods and capital goods (excluding aircraft). Now that the "ordering binge" has ended, the new orders series have reversed, especially for consumer goods posting monthly declines in five out of the past six months. That has contributed to the leading index's monthly decreases.

Yet, is removing "double-ordering" a sign of economic weakness or a technical adjustment in the orders series? New orders for consumer goods are off their record highs but remain elevated and stand 25% above pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, new orders for capital goods (ex-aircraft) were at record highs in April. It's worth noting that unfilled orders, an indicator in an earlier version of the composite index of leading indicators, stands at a record high. New and unfilled orders raise questions about whether the economy is transitioning to a slower growth environment or an outright recession.

Another questionable component of the current leading index is the yield curve, or the spread between the yield on the 10-year Treasury and the federal funds rate. The yield curve series was included in the leading index in the mid-2000s. But that was before the Fed embarked on quantitative easing (QE) or the purchase of long-date securities with the primary intent of keeping long bond yields lower than what otherwise would be the case.

The current inversion of the yield curve is the widest on record, negatively impacting the composite index of leading indicators. It defies logic to think that the yield curve offers similar (leading) signals when the Fed buys securities and when the Fed does not. The Fed doubled its balance sheet to over $ 8 trillion during the past three years. The yield curve was added to the composite leading index in the mid-2000s, and the Fed balance was pretty steady at $750 billion, less than one-tenth of its current size.

With QE as a new policy tool, comparing long bond yields to inflation makes more sense as it is a proxy for real interest rates and captures the intent of QE (i.e., keeping the long-term borrowing cost low). Replacing the yield curve with a proxy for real interest rates would dramatically alter the pattern of the composite of leading indicators.

One cannot use Paul Samuleson's comparison of the stock market in predicting "nine out of the past five recessions" with the track record of the composite index of leading indicators because if the current composition of the index does not accurately predict business cyclical turning points, it will be refitted or redesigned with a group of indicators that does. Unfortunately, that does not offer any hope for investors because people make decisions in "real-time" and can't wait for data revisions or a new index. History painfully shows that using one set of cyclical indicators to predict the future is fraught with failure. That's not a criticism of using leading indicators to help predict cyclical turning points. Still, things are constantly changing in the economy, requiring more than a small set of indicators to predict the future.

As was the case in the April report, only 5 states saw statistically significant increases in payrolls in May, with Texas gaining 51,000 jobs. Utah has the largest percentage increase: .5. A fair number of states report insignificant decreases.

11 states had statistically significant drops in unemployment from April to May, none larger than .3 percentage point. Nevada’s unemployment rate stayed the highest in the nation at an unchanged 5.4 percent. No other state had a rate more than a point higher than the national 3.7 percent, though DC’s was 5.1 percent. Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin all have rates more than a point lower than the nation, with New Hampshire and South Dakota both at 1.9 percent. California, Texas, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, and Delaware (along with DC) are the states other than Nevada with rates at or above 4 percent. While the seasonally adjusted state rates are not strictly comparable to the national rate, the relatively high rates in the two largest states help explain why so many states can have rates far below the national average, and only handful somewhat higher.

Puerto Rico’s unemployment rate edged up to 6.1 percent. The job count on the island moved above 950,000 (the initial April count was also above 950,00, but there has been a downward revision). Private employment set a new all-time peak, surpassing the old March 2006 record.

Yes, but energy prices fell by 3.6% month-to-month and food prices were up only 0.2%. Used motor vehicle prices account for only 2.75% of the CPI while food and energy prices account for 20.30% of the CPI. Typically each month some consumer prices rise and some prices fall. That is why when we try to measure the overall change in consumer prices we use a weighted price index, the weights being determined by the estimated relative importance of the different items purchased by a representative household.

Let’s look at the annualized percent changes in the All-Items CPI over one month, 3 months, six months and 12 months, which are plotted in Chart 1. As of May 2023, the annualized percent change in the CPI was 4.13%, 3.17%, 2.20% and 1.50% over 12 months, six months, three months and one month, respectively. In May 2022, these changes were 8.50%, 9.21%, 9.69% and 11.62%.

The budget/debt ceiling negotiation ended like several others; a lot of drama but no fundamental change. The irony is that the primary goal of these negotiations, at the least from House negotiators, was to reduce the staggering debt load of the federal government. Yet, in the end, Congress again decided to vote for more debt, a lot of it, to pay for spending.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the US will run budget deficits between $1.5 to 2.0 trillion per year for the next decade, adding nearly $20 trillion to the federal government's outstanding debt.

Nearly two decades ago, CBO projected the US would run budget deficits in the $200 to $300 billion range, which alarmed former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Back then, Mr. Greenspan stated, "When you begin to do the arithmetic of what the rising debt level implied by the deficits tells you, and you add interest costs to that ever-rising debt, at ever-higher interest rates, the system becomes fiscally destabilizing," he told lawmakers. " What would he say today?

The impact of budget deficits on interest rates varies depending on economic conditions. Yet, huge budget deficits for the foreseeable future will occur as the Federal Reserve reduces its balance sheet, removing the non-interest rate-sensitive buyer that has held down interest rates in the past several years. Market interest rates will have to go much higher to attract private sector buyers, and it would not be surprising if ten-year yields rise 100 to 200 basis points over current levels in coming years.

To balance the federal budget requires two things; first, cutting the entitlement programs, and second, raising taxes. Critics would argue against higher taxes, but balancing the budget with tax receipts equaling less than 20%-plus % of GDP (currently running at 18%) is impossible. And since individual tax payments represent a record 50%-plus of total taxes, while corporate tax payments are near a record low of 8%, business taxes are at risk of increasing.

In the past decade, investors have benefitted doubly from Congress's decision to use debt instead of taxes to pay for record spending and the Fed's record purchases of debt securities. Yet, that era is over. The debt deal maintains record federal borrowing, but now without the Fed as a (buying) partner. Investors should expect higher interest rates as a result. And once the higher debt costs become fiscally destabilizing, as Greenspan noted, Congress must move on taxes, with business taxes the target.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s state coincident indexes in April report gains in all states from March. Vermont had the largest increase (1.27 percent) while neighboring Massachusetts was the other state with a rise of more than 1 percent. West Virginia was, once again, the leading state at the three-month horizon, up a bit more than 3 percent, while Vermont—perhaps the second hilliest Eastern state, after West Virginia—was second. The majority of states again had increases of at least 1 percent since January; Alaska was again the only state with a decline over this horizon. Over the past 12 months, Massachusetts was the leader, with an increase of almost 4 ½ percent, barely edging Texas and New Mexico. Kansas was the only state with an increase of less than 1 percent since April 2022.

The independently estimated national figures of growth over the last 3 months (.74 percent) appears to be short of what the state figures suggest, while the corresponding 12-month result (3.72 percent) looks more or less in line with the state numbers.