ECRI WLI “Flattens Out” at -9.8% - ECRI says “Gage is Fine”

ECRI WLI “Flattens Out” at -9.8% – ECRI says “Gage is Fine”

Courtesy of Mish

Lakshman Achuthan and Anirvan Banerji, Co-founders, Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), continue to pour out statements about the ECRI WLI that are worth taking a close look at, if not outright challenging them.

Please consider Know How to Read WLI.

Sir, “Out on a limb, the ECRI weekly leading indicator … suggests a double-dip recession is imminent,” according to James Mackintosh (The Short View, August 4). This is a popular misconception pushed by pessimistic pundits.

Let’s review what the Weekly Leading index (WLI) has done this year. After rising to a two-and-a-quarter-year high by end-April, it plunged for all of two months – before flattening out and finally edging up to a six-week high by end-July. That’s hardly a recession signal.

Imagine flying in an aircraft that hits a huge air pocket and plunges 5,000ft in 10 seconds. That would leave you quite shaken up, but it doesn’t mean the aircraft’s about to crash – unless it keeps falling. That’s pretty much what’s happened with the WLI. Unless it turns down again and then keeps falling, it wouldn’t make sense to predict an imminent recession.

Many self-proclaimed experts have been back-fitting our data, looking at the WLI the wrong way, and screaming that the end is near. This is like people saying they don’t remember an aircraft dropping so fast and not crashing, while blaming the instrument makers for not trusting their own altimeter. Well, we do trust it. Bottom line, the gauge is just fine – as long as you know how to read it.

When there really is danger of an imminent recession, it will be signalled by a cyclical downturn in the WLI itself rather than its growth rate. But that hasn’t happened yet.

ECRI WLI

click on chart for sharper image

When there is “danger” of an imminent recession by the ECRI’s calls, history suggests we will have been in a recession for months. Nonetheless, one must be careful of “reading” indicators, especially when no one knows for sure what the hell it even consists of.

Instead, I would like to point out that two weeks of flattening after an enormous plunge to -10.8 is hardly worth calling “flattening”. Let’s see where the index goes from here before we talk about “flattening” after that unprecedented nosedive.

By the way, this is not like an airplane dropping then recovering. Please pay attention to the zero line.…

Read the original story at Phil’s Stock World