Leading Economic Indicators (October)

Better late than never... leading economic indicators for October (released last Thursday) were down 0.8 percent:

The leading index declined sharply in October as stock prices, building permits, consumer expectations and the index of supplier deliveries made large negative contributions to the index, despite continued positive contributions from real money supply and the interest rate spread.

In the past two months, without the very large positive contributions from inflation–adjusted money supply (the largest in seven years), the leading index would have been substantially weaker. Between April and October 2008, the leading index declined 2.4 percent (a -4.7 percent annual rate), falling considerably faster than the 1.2 percent decrease (a -2.3 percent annual rate) over the previous six months.