Dwaine van Vuuren's Contributions

Oct 15 – It appears U.S investors’ concerns with global trade wars are dominating U.S. stock market direction for the last two years. This is with valid reason, as prior research (Global Economy affects U.S stock market returns) has pointed out...

Jun 12 – It is quite possible that the majority of market participants are underestimating the extent and duration of the current rate-tightening cycle. Clearly one could now deduce that we are indeed “overdue” a fed funds rate decrease, or a new easing cycle!

Mar 11 – We have updated the RecessionALERT Valuation Index (RAVI) forecast models for the SP500 using fourth quarter 2018 data. Stock market valuations continue to pose a “clear and present danger” to positive economic...

Feb 26 – As a matter of interest, 60% of all 10 possible term-spreads have now inverted, as shown below with our average yield curve composite of all 10 term-spreads. All the forecast dates have moved forward by 1 month as the yield curve continues to print below...

By Dwaine Van Vuuren – There is a lot of focus on the U.S. yield curve at the moment given its relentless move toward inversion (when short-term rates are higher than long-term rates). Can the history of the yield curve provide for useful forecasting...

By Dwaine Van Vuuren – Despite the U.S. leading economic indicators appearing healthy, the global economy appears to be headed for a slow down, with only 34% of the 40 countries we track having leading economic indicators (LEI’s) signalling growth ahead...

The strength of the labor market is constantly being trotted out in defense of the robust status of the US economy, but broad sets of labor data show this not to be the case. First, let us examine a very broad US labor market growth metric...

The RecessionALERT Valuation Index (RAVI) is a multifactor valuation model that examines cyclically adjusted trailing SP-500 earnings (various multi-decade horizons), the SP-500 total-return index level, total stock market capitalization...

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen recently used her “jobs data dashboard” to justify the Fed’s easy money policies and to argue there’s still considerable slack in the labor market five years after the recession’s end.

The RecessionALERT monthly U.S Leading Growth Index (USMLI) is an index that attempts to capture future (6-9 months) U.S economic growth. The USMLI posted a modest rise in November, after 5 months of declines, pointing to an improved outlook for economic growth.

We have entered the Mid-Term cycle in the Quadrennial Presidential Cycle, in which the months April through to September typically represent the worst SP-500 seasonal period for the entire 4 year cycle...

It does not matter which way you look at it – the global economy has rebounded into growth territory from which surely could have been classified as a World Recession a few quarters ago.

For decades, investors have sought out methods to detect oncoming bear markets. With this current bull market now in its 5th year the subject has become even more topical...

The SuperIndex has jumped smartly this week from mostly positive data from eLEI and the ISM report.

Whilst the market has sold off in the expectation of FED tapering in the face of an improving economy, and co-incident economic data continues to show improvement, the leading data is likely to do otherwise in the coming months.

There are a number of interesting observations we can make this month. The first is that whilst the percentage of economies experiencing a single quarters negative growth seems to have subsided from a meteorite rise.

Since we last reported on the current Global Recession, the Global Leading Economic Indicator (GLEI) rose for the month of March, but is following an atypical growth pattern coming out of recession, with a slope far shallower than the normal expected rebound.

We have all the numbers in for quarter-on-quarter GDP growth for Q4-2012 from around the world. Since our last report in February “World plunges into recession”, the percentage of countries with negative q-on-q GDP growth (1 and 2 consecutive quarters) have improved somewhat as more countries came into the sample and GDP’s revised upwards.

Our prior post titled “World Recession Update” depicted the percentage of 41 countries tracked around the globe that were printing 1 or 2 consecutive negative quarters of GDP growth.