{"id":20520,"date":"2023-01-25T07:30:12","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T12:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/?p=20520"},"modified":"2023-01-25T07:30:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T12:30:12","slug":"a-recession-indicator-with-a-perfect-track-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/a-recession-indicator-with-a-perfect-track-record\/","title":{"rendered":"A Recession Indicator With a Perfect Track Record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Jeff&rsquo;s Note:<\/strong> Today is the start of what I predict will be 44 days of hell. You see, due to a federal law, hundreds of stocks are set to experience one-day drops of 10%, 20%, 30%, or more&hellip;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When I correctly predicted the 2000, 2008, and 2020 crashes, few people believed me. But when stocks collapsed, it crushed the retirement dreams of millions of Americans. So please don&rsquo;t take this warning lightly.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s why I want to <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT707648&#038;eid=MKT710478&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC168093\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">prepare you for this crash using my &ldquo;crash-proof&rdquo; strategy<\/a> that&rsquo;s so reliable it&rsquo;s been called &ldquo;a stock market law of gravity.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>And I&rsquo;ll go over everything you need to know tonight at 8 p.m. ET during my urgent presentation. Time is running out, so <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT707648&#038;eid=MKT710478&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC168093\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click right here to save your seat for free<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And read on about what analyst Clint Brewer says is in store for the economy and your portfolio&hellip;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Rates are expected to rise once again&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>But this time, when the Federal Reserve meets next week to set interest rates, analysts expect the central bank to hike rates by just 0.25%.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s a marked slowdown from the last two meetings, where the Fed increased rates by 0.50% and 0.75%.<\/p>\n<p>And the consensus view among economists is that the Fed will then pause its rate hiking campaign to assess the damage to the economy.<\/p>\n<p>But you may be wondering&hellip; what damage? After all, the unemployment rate sits at 3.5%, which is among the lowest levels ever.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, the Fed&rsquo;s own estimate for GDP growth is running over 3.0% annualized for the most recent quarter. That&rsquo;s hardly the stuff recessions are made of.<\/p>\n<p>But those metrics are <em>lagging<\/em> economic indicators, meaning they don&rsquo;t worsen until it&rsquo;s already too late.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s why you should follow <em>leading<\/em> indicators. And despite their tough talk on inflation in public, my guess is that behind closed doors the outlook for the economy is making Fed officials nervous.<\/p>\n<p>Let me show you the message coming from leading indicators, and what it means for the economy and stock market&hellip;<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\">A Perfect Track Record<\/h2>\n<p>The Fed is mandated by Congress to keep prices stable, and people employed&hellip; hence the focus on inflation and the labor market when it comes to interest rate policy.<\/p>\n<p>But the problem is that both inflation and employment are lagging indicators&hellip; meaning they&rsquo;re among the last things to worsen when the Fed is deliberately slowing the economy as they&rsquo;re doing now.<\/p>\n<p>So, in order to stay one step ahead of where things are going, it pays to follow leading indicators of activity.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s why I closely follow the Conference Board&rsquo;s Leading Economic Index (LEI). It&rsquo;s comprised of 10 underlying metrics and historically leads key turning points in the economy by around seven months.<\/p>\n<p>And here&rsquo;s where the bad news comes in&#8230; LEI is falling sharply.<\/p>\n<p>The drop is surpassing levels that have a perfect track record at predicting recessions. You can see that in the LEI chart below&hellip;<\/p>\n<div class=\"text-center mb-4\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.jeffclarktrader.com\/JMU\/images\/202301\/20230125-jmu-01_lgb679.png\" alt=\"Chart\" class=\"img-fluid\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The blue line is the year-over-year (YoY) change in the LEI.<\/p>\n<p>The dashed black line shows when the rate of change is crossing above or below zero. A cross below zero is when you should become concerned about the economic outlook.<\/p>\n<p>The arrows on the chart mark when this happened historically.<\/p>\n<p>And those red shaded areas are past recessions. That&rsquo;s why the recent tumble into negative territory is concerning for the outlook.<\/p>\n<p>But not only does a plunging LEI have implications for the economy, it also impacts your portfolio&hellip;<\/p>\n<table bgcolor=\"#eeeeee\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"10\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: 1px solid #D7D7D7; margin-bottom:20px;\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"padding-left: 15px;padding-right: 15px; padding-top: 15px; font-family: Arial,sans-serif;font-size:17px; line-height:24px;\">\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"-ms-text-size-adjust: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; margin-bottom: 20px; font-size: 18px;\"><strong>Free Trading Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"-ms-text-size-adjust: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 0px\">Have you checked out Jeff&#8217;s free trading resources on his website? It contains a selection of special reports, training videos, and a full trading glossary to help kickstart your trading career \u2013 at zero cost to you. Just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click here<\/a> to check it out.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\">LEI&rsquo;s Worst Phase<\/h2>\n<p>The level and direction of LEI in the chart above can impact stock market returns as well.<\/p>\n<p>It comes down to different stages of LEI, and what that means for the direction of the economy.<\/p>\n<p>Using those stages, here&rsquo;s a table that shows the S&amp;P 500&rsquo;s return depending on the signal coming from the LEI&hellip;<\/p>\n<div class=\"text-center mb-4\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.jeffclarktrader.com\/JMU\/images\/202301\/20230125-jmu-02_lgb679.png\" alt=\"Chart\" class=\"img-fluid\" \/><\/div>\n<p>You&rsquo;ll notice that when LEI is falling and in negative territory, that&rsquo;s historically been the worst combination for stock returns.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s because it signals a worsening economy ahead, which has implications for the earnings outlook. And that&rsquo;s the stage we&rsquo;re in now.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that the stock market&rsquo;s best phase tends to happen next, when LEI finally bottoms out and turns higher.<\/p>\n<p>So, while good times may lie ahead when LEI finally bottoms, it&rsquo;s still time to be cautious when planning out your trades.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s important to be prepared in this type of market environment, which is why I urge you to join Jeff Clark&rsquo;s special presentation tonight at 8 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n<p>During it, he&rsquo;ll go over a market anomaly that&rsquo;s set to trigger a <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT707648&#038;eid=MKT710478&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC168137\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">44-day crash<\/a>&hellip; it&rsquo;s one of his most urgent warnings yet&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;ll mark the beginning of an absolute disaster in the stock market. But Jeff will prepare you with the three stocks he&rsquo;s targeting and show you his &ldquo;crash-proof&rdquo; strategy.<\/p>\n<p>Just <a href=\"https:\/\/signup.jeffclarktrader.com\/?cid=MKT707648&#038;eid=MKT710478&#038;step=start&#038;plcid=PLC168137\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click right here<\/a> to instantly reserve your spot for tonight.<\/p>\n<p>Best regards,<\/p>\n<p>Clint Brewer<br \/>Analyst, <em>Market Minute <\/em><\/p>\n<p><!-- MAILBAG BEGIN --><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align:center\"><strong>Reader Mailbag<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In today&rsquo;s mailbag, a reader comments on Imre Gam&rsquo;s essay about the process you should apply to all your trades. If you missed his advice, you can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/follow-these-four-steps-before-rushing-into-a-trade\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">find it right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"border-left: 4px solid #ccc; margin: 0px 30px 0px 10px;padding-left: 15px;\">\n<p>The &#8220;Follow These Four Steps Before Rushing Into a Trade&#8221; was a great article. It should really help with my trading. Keep more like this coming.<\/p>\n<p align=\"right\"><strong>&ndash; Jeremiah M.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Thank you, as always, for your thoughtful comments. We look forward to reading them every day. Keep them coming at <a href=\"mailto:feedback@jeffclarktrader.com\">feedback@jeffclarktrader.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><!-- MAILBAG END --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leading indicators are sounding the alarm bell\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"service":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"publication":[10],"person":[82],"newsletter-type":[],"ticker":[],"class_list":["post-20520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-minute","publication-market-minute","person-clint-brewer"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20520"},{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=20520"},{"taxonomy":"person","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/person?post=20520"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-type?post=20520"},{"taxonomy":"ticker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarktrader.com\/market-minute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ticker?post=20520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}